Bit Reactor, the studio behind Star Wars Zero Company, furloughed the majority of its staff just before the game launched.
Critically praised and currently a bestseller on Steam, Star Wars Zero Company looked to have had a brilliant launch — though the celebrations have now been marred by word of what has happened to the people who made it.
A Game File report has now highlighted comments made by Zachariah Scott, a former Bit Reactor employee, who claimed the company was “concealing the fact that the team was furloughed weeks ago” — while its CEO Greg Foertsch was busy at Gamescom last week talking about the team’s next game.
While Bit Reactor has since confirmed to Game File many of its staff are now on furlough, the exact numbers of people involved are unclear. The report’s suggestion is that 80% of the studio have currently been placed on leave without pay, leaving behind a small number of staff to deal with any post-launch bugs. It’s believed that Bit Reactor ran out of money to pay employees shortly before launch, despite hopes of landing another game deal, and a push to keep costs down with “austerity”.
The furlough has come to light as part of messy legal action between Bit Reactor’s former COO, Alison Kelly, and Foertsch. Kelly, another company co-founder, alleges she was pushed out of Bit Reactor by Foertsch and left without compensation for her stake. Foertsch has denied this and countersued, with a trial now set for early 2027.
One interesting part of all this is a claim that Zero Company ended up being made due to Kelly getting the project in front of the late Respawn and EA executive Zince Zampella, who initially considered the idea for a Titanfall spinoff, before suggesting it switch to being based around the Star Wars license instead.
Whether Star Wars Zero Company’s success can salvage the studio and its team remains to be seen, and Bit Reactor has made no comment on how well the game needs to perform commercially in order to reinstate its staff.
“Star Wars Zero Company is an excellent tactical game that does a fantastic job of slathering on the same cinematic look and feel we saw in Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi games,” we wrote in IGN’s Star Wars Zero Company review, which returned a 9/10, “incorporating strong characters and a storyline that’s refreshingly centered on non-Force users and a non-traditional villain.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
