Star Wars Zero Company Tops 1M Units, Yet Bit Reactor Faces More Layoffs

Strong sales were supposed to bring laid-off developers back, but another round of cuts has arrived instead.

Fresh cuts at the studio behind Star Wars Zero Company have changed the picture around the game's performance. Bit Reactor was already in a difficult spot heading into launch, with most of its staff furloughed and a skeleton crew left in place. Now more people have been let go, and that doesn't match what the sales suggested.

Before release, the studio ran out of money and had to prioritize, which meant parting ways with much of the team. Reports at the time suggested the developer carried some blame for how tight things got before the game reached the finish line. The plan was simple: once Star Wars Zero Company began selling, the people who left could be hired back.

The game launched and, going by widely shared figures, passed one million units sold. That's solid for a turn-based tactics release. XCOM is the usual comparison: after the reboot, the first entry sold around five million, while the sequel, released around 2016 or 2017, topped out near two million.

Those numbers are approximate, but they show XCOM games have never posted enormous totals, so a million for Star Wars Zero Company sits in a realistic range. Even so, the recovery stalled. Some former employees were brought back, or at least the process began, but not everyone returned. Then a new round of layoffs arrived today, before the rehiring was finished.

A million copies was expected to stop the financial bleeding and open the door to funding for the next project.

The goal was never dozens of new hires or a shutdown, just bringing people back and staying afloat. Affected staff have reacted with loyalty. Many say they'd return to work tomorrow if given the chance. That isn't always the case. After the yearly cuts at large publishers like XBOX, former employees have sometimes voiced bitterness.

Here the tone is understanding, as if they see circumstances rather than bad intent behind the decision. Post-release layoffs are common in the industry. A game ships, headcount drops in the stretch before the next project, and hiring picks up again once pre-production and full production begin. Sucker Punch is a recent example, cutting around 25 people after Ghost of Yōtei and its DLC launched.

The next year or two goes to deciding whether the follow-up is another Ghost game, an Infamous title or something else, and a full team isn't needed during that window. What's happening at Bit Reactor doesn't fit that pattern. The studio cut most of its staff before launch, never fully rehired, and then cut again in the middle of rehiring. That differs from the planned downsizing at Sucker Punch.

None of this means the studio is finished.

Bit Reactor will probably continue with a small team and could rebuild its funding as it prepares a new game. A sequel to Star Wars Zero Company hasn't been announced, though nothing has been ruled out. The game is still getting support. A positive update went out about two weeks ago, and if Star Wars Zero Company keeps finding buyers over the next couple of years, multi-million sales remain possible.

Players who own it have spoken well of it, which makes the outcome harder to explain. The layoffs after a million-unit launch of Star Wars Zero Company show the sales haven't produced the stability the team needed. In short, Star Wars Zero Company sold about what its genre allows, and the team still shrank.

Next to XCOM, which has rarely posted blockbuster numbers, the sales for Star Wars Zero Company are ordinary, but the aftermath isn't. Even Sucker Punch, cutting for routine reasons, kept its team through launch and DLC. Whether Star Wars Zero Company counts as a success is something sales figures alone don't settle.