Bit Reactor, the studio behind Star Wars Zero Company, has laid off staff, according to developers who said on LinkedIn on Friday, November 6, that they had lost their jobs. Neither Bit Reactor nor publisher Electronic Arts has commented, and nobody has said how many people are affected.
It’s a hard turn for a team whose game, by most accounts, did well. Zero Company launched on August 27, and analytics firm Alinea Analytics estimated it passed 1 million copies and about $50 million in revenue in its first month. Those are outside estimates, not official sales figures.
Environment art, UI and QA developers say they were let go
The developers who have spoken publicly so far work across the studio:
- Ryan Lopez, a senior environment artist who spent about four years at Bit Reactor and helped build the exterior of The Den
- Tyler Eichten, a UI engineer who worked on the on-screen interface for tactical missions
- Ryan Mosher, a member of the QA team
“I am immensely proud of the work that I, the UI/UX team, and the team at large have accomplished,” Eichten wrote. Lopez thanked his colleagues, saying it was a privilege to ship a game with them.
Friday was their last day. It isn’t clear whether any of the departing staff were among the developers Bit Reactor brought back from furlough after launch.
Bit Reactor furloughed about 80 percent of its staff before launch
This is the second round of cuts in about three months. Weeks before Zero Company came out, Bit Reactor put roughly 80 percent of its developers on furlough. The studio said that was its own decision, not one made by EA or Disney.
After the game launched, Bit Reactor started bringing people back, and more than half of the furloughed staff returned to work. Not all of them were reportedly restored to full pay. The studio hasn’t said what the new layoffs mean for Zero Company’s post-launch updates.
Star Wars Zero Company is a turn-based tactics game set during the Clone Wars, available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. We’ll update this story if Bit Reactor or EA comments.
