Star Wars Zero Company Studio Lays Off Staff a Month After Furlough Recall

Bit Reactor hasn't said how many developers lost their jobs, while outside trackers estimate the tactics game has sold 1.2 million copies.

Ryan Lopez helped make Star Wars Zero Company, then spent about three months on furlough waiting to get back to it. Now the senior environment artist says the studio has let him go for good.

Lopez wrote on LinkedIn that he was "laid off from Bit Reactor this week after a three-month furlough, and while it stings, I'm really proud of what we built together," This Week in Videogames reported. Several Bit Reactor developers posted the same news on Friday. Video Games Chronicle reported that the cuts came a month after the studio started bringing furloughed developers back. According to Gamereactor, the studio hasn't said how many people are affected or why.

What makes it sting is that the game did well. Zero Company, a turn-based tactics game published by Electronic Arts, came out Aug. 27 on PC, PS5 and Xbox and holds an 84 on Metacritic for PC, GamesIndustry.biz reported. The market tracker Video Game Insights now estimates it has sold 1.2 million copies and brought in about $52.2 million. Those are outside estimates, and Gamereactor noted that EA hasn't confirmed the million-copy figure.

The money trouble started before launch. Game File reported in September that most of the staff had been furloughed without pay, according to This Week in Videogames. Shacknews said that report described a Maryland studio that had run out of funding as release day approached.

Then things seemed to turn around. "This week, we started the process of returning more of our team back to work at Bit Reactor," CEO Greg Foertsch wrote in a statement the studio posted on Oct. 7, Shacknews reported. Game File later said the number of people on the payroll was back above half of what it was before the furloughs, which meant some people were still out.

Foertsch founded Bit Reactor just over four years ago after working as art director at Firaxis, and he hired from the studio behind XCOM, GamesIndustry.biz noted. So the team built a take on the kind of squad tactics game its people knew best, and by most measures it worked.

The people now posting goodbyes come from all over the team. GamesIndustry.biz named QA professional Ryan Mosher, producer Michael Blackard, environment artists Michael Cabezas and Joshua Jay, and UI engineer Tyler Eichten, along with Lopez. It isn't clear how many of them had been furloughed. QA specialist Felix Simonson wrote that he was "joining a number of my cohort that has been laid off from the team following the furlough situation that started earlier this year in August," This Week in Videogames reported.

GamesIndustry.biz said it had asked Bit Reactor and EA for comment. Foertsch's October post promised more news about the studio and Zero Company. So far, the news has come from his developers' LinkedIn posts.

Source: thisweekinvideogames.com, retrieved November 9, 2026. Other sources: gamereactor.eu, gamesindustry.biz, shacknews.com.