Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor laid off an unspecified amount of staff on Friday. This comes after a period of furlough for most of the company’s staff.
Despite launching to rave reviews, the game has only sold 1 million copies. We learned several weeks ago that Bit Reactor ran out of money in the weeks leading up to launch and roughly 80% of staff were placed on furlough. We did get some good news last month from the studio with an announcement and report on how more than 50% of staff were returning to work on the game. Patch 1.2 followed this but since then virtually nothing about the game’s future has been shared.
Given that not all the staff were able to be brought back onto full pay recently, it seemed likely Bit Reactor would make the decision to lay off some staff at some point. According to various employees across different departments, there has been a round of layoffs. The individuals revealed on November 6th was their last day at the studio. It is unclear if anyone who was brought back off furlough is part of these departures.
Senior Environment Artist Ryan Lopez who worked there for nearly 4 years said in a post on LinkedIn that despite this situation stinging, he’s proud of the team’s work. He thanked everyone at the studio and added “it was privilege to ship a game with you”. Lopez was key to building The Den’s exterior.
“I am immensely proud of the work that I, the UI/UX team, and the team at large have accomplished. I hope that in this tumultous industry that my coworkers (and myself) find placement.”
Tyler Eichten
Tyler Eichten, UI Engineer, also posted in LinkedIn that he has been laid off. He was responsible for a lot of the game’s on-screen UI during tactical missions. QA team member Ryan Mosher shared he was also impacted by this decision. Producer Michael Blackard says he is “giddy at the idea of returning” to work at Bit Reactor at some point.
“I’ll potentially write something more verbose in the future but know that I’m eternally grateful to Greg Foertsch and Caydence Funk for putting their faith in me to move the mountains that needed to be. I will be gushing about my teammates and writing testimonials over the next few days and weeks. You all gotta work with these people!”
Michael Blackard
We hope that everyone effected can find a new role soon and wish the best for Bit Reactor too in these difficult times.
In other Star Wars gaming news, Star Wars Galactic Racer and Battlefront 2 were two of the most downloaded PlayStation games last month. Learn more here.
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