Star Wars Zero Company launched on August 27 to the best reviews a Star Wars game has earned in more than two decades, and to the biggest Steam launch the franchise has ever had. But weeks before any of that happened — before a single review went live, before the first player deployed a squad — developer Bit Reactor had already furloughed much of the team that built it.
The furloughs were first reported by Stephen Totilo at Game File, and Bit Reactor has since confirmed to Game Developer that the studio suspended staff ahead of the game's release. What makes the story unusual isn't that a studio cut costs. It's that the cost-cutting was a bet against a game that appears, so far, to have won.
