While Star Wars Zero Company has been seeing quite a bit of critical acclaim since its release last week, the developer Bit Reactor has seemingly been going through some hard times. According to a report by Game File, many of its employees have been working without pay due to being furloughed a few weeks before the game’s launch.
A representative for Bit Reactor has confirmed that this has been the case, and said that it was a difficult decision that had been made so that the company could survive at least until the launch of Star Wars Zero Company. The representative also noted that the decision was made by Bit Reactor, and that publisher EA and Star Wars IP owner Disney had nothing to do with it.
While the representative didn’t go into detail about how many employees had been furloughed, Game File’s report has dug up a lawsuit filed by Bit Reactor co-founder Alison Kelly about how the studio “has furloughed most of its employees and terminated contractors.” The filing itself was from last month. The report also indicates that the furlough has affected 80 percent of the studio’s workforce, with a skeleton crew being left on the active payroll to work on post-launch issues.
Former senior technical artist for Bit Reactor, Zachariah Scott, even took to LinkedIn to note that the studio has been “concealing the fact that the team was furloughed weeks ago.” He went on to confirm that the people he spoke to who were still working at the studio had “essentially the same story, which is, ‘Yeah, I got furloughed three weeks ago.’”
The studio’s representative has said that the company plans to bring back workers who had been furloughed with restored pay following the launch of Star Wars Zero Company. This indicates that the company had been running on fumes by the time the title was released and was hoping for additional revenue from the game to pay its employees. However, Scott has said that the furloughed employees haven’t been confident about potentially returning to the studio.
As for the lawsuit, Kelly had filed it all the way back in 2024, alleging that she had been pushed out of the company by co-founder Greg Foertsch. Much of the lawsuit came down to whether Kelly, who worked as the studio’s COO, was also a co-owner alongside Foertsch. Kelly has cited $20 million in damages based on the supposed value of Bit Reactor, while Foertsch has claimed that she was never a co-owner.
In the meantime, Star Wars Zero Company is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, and alongside praise from critics, has also seen positive player response. Its Steam listing, at the time of publishing, has an aggregate rating of “Mostly Positive” based on 8,622 user reviews, 79 percent of whom gave it a thumbs up.
In our own review, we praised the characterization, writing, tactical gameplay loop, and how well it was able to capture the mood and atmosphere of the Star Wars setting. Our only complaints were a few technical issues on consoles and the story lacking stakes in its latter half.
