Following the moderate success of Disco Elysium, ZA/UM released Zero Parades: For Dead Spies on May 21, with the studio’s ambitions riding on the new spy thriller RPG. Unfortunately, that seems to have not panned out, as was confirmed in a July 17 announcement on the studio’s X account. In the announcement, ZA/UM acknowledges that “while Zero Parades: For Dead Spies was released to critical acclaim, its commercial performance has not enabled us to sustain a studio of our current size.”
The studio goes on to confirm that the game’s poor performance has resulted in “redundancy or at-risk notices” for up to 32 of ZA/UM’s workers across multiple departments. According to SteamDB, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies peaked at 3,177 concurrent players just four days after launch, and that number has just declined since then, with the game only attracting around 500 peak concurrent players on a daily basis.
This is only the most recent set of layoffs in a brutal couple of months in the gaming industry. Other layoffs have impacted massive studios, like Xbox Game Studios, where some studios have been decimated, as 1,600 staff lost their jobs and 1,600 more employees will lose their work during the upcoming year. Sony also recently conducted “significant” layoffs at Bungie following the shutdown of Destiny 2, and more recently, 1047 Games laid off an unknown number of staff following the unfortunately underwhelming launch of Empulse.
The full announcement reads.
ZA/UM Studio on XToday, we are sharing difficult news. While Zero Parades: For Dead Spies was released to critical acclaim, its commercial performance has not enabled us to sustain a studio of our current size.
We have served redundancy or at-risk notices impacting up to 32 of our colleagues across all departments at ZA/UM Studio. Their work has made a lasting difference and left its mark on Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, and the studio as a whole.
Throughout this difficult process, we have continued to consult and work with representatives of the ZA/UM Workers’ Alliance.
This changes the shape of ZA/UM, but not its purpose. Our artistic standards remain unchanged: we will persist
To anyone currently hiring, please consider the colleagues leaving ZA/UM.
