Most of Bit Reactor was furloughed before Zero Company launched. Here is what is known, and what it means if you are buying

Bit Reactor furloughed most of its employees, without pay, about three weeks before Star Wars: Zero Company shipped on August 27. Stephen Totilo reported it at Game File on Monday, September 1, and a Bit Reactor representative confirmed it to him the same day. We should have covered it on Monday. This is the piece we owe you: what is on the record, what is only sourced, and what it changes for anyone deciding whether to buy the game we gave a 9 out of 10.

What is on the record

Three things are confirmed, either by the studio or by court paperwork.

The furloughs happened, and they came from Bit Reactor. The studio's representative told Game File that furloughing most of the team was "a difficult decision," that it was made before anyone knew how the launch would go, and that it was Bit Reactor's decision alone, not EA's and not Disney's. The studio said it hopes to bring the furloughed staff back with restored pay if the launch is a success.

Contractors were let go outright. An August 12 filing in a lawsuit between the studio's two co-founders states that the company "furloughed most of its employees and terminated contractors." That filing predates launch by two weeks, which is how the story surfaced.

The studio has been in a legal fight over who owns it since 2024. Alison Kelly, a co-founder and Bit Reactor's chief operating officer until 2024, is suing co-founder and CEO Greg Foertsch for breach of contract and unjust enrichment, seeking more than 20 million dollars. She says she was forced out and denied an equal ownership stake; his side says her role was reduced for performance. The case moved from federal court to Baltimore County, Maryland, and the trial slipped from June 2026 to early 2027.

What is sourced but not confirmed

The 80 percent figure that has run in most headlines comes from one of Game File's sources, not from the studio, which would not put a number on it. "Most" is the word Bit Reactor used. A second source described the remaining team as a skeleton crew kept on for post-launch bug fixing.

The claim that Bit Reactor ran out of money before launch is Game File's reporting from its sources. The studio has not said that in as many words. It is consistent with furloughing people rather than laying them off, which is what a company does when it expects money to arrive later, and with the statement that pay would be restored if the game sold.

Zachariah Scott, who worked at Bit Reactor until May, wrote on LinkedIn that it was "sick and weird to have all of these EA and Disney folks praising the work of the team while seemingly concealing the fact that the team was furloughed weeks ago." That is one former employee's view, and it is the clearest public statement from anyone who was inside.

EA has not commented anywhere we can find. The studio's launch-day note on Steam, signed by Foertsch, thanked "everyone at Bit Reactor" for a passion project and did not mention that most of them were not being paid that week.

The game did well anyway, which is the uncomfortable part

By every public measure the launch Bit Reactor was betting on has landed. Zero Company was Steam's top-selling game worldwide for the week of August 25 to September 1. SteamDB recorded a peak of 77,889 concurrent players on Sunday, August 30, the highest any Star Wars game has hit on Steam since LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga in 2022. It holds an 85 on Metacritic, the best score for a Star Wars game since Knights of the Old Republic II in 2004.

If the studio's statement is taken at face value, that is exactly the outcome that brings people back. Nobody outside the company can say whether it has.

The review protest, and why it is aimed at the wrong target

Within a day of the report, negative Steam reviews started appearing that praised the game and then marked it down over the furloughs. One of the most upvoted reads, in part, that the writer "was going to give this game a 10/10" and could not, because "3 weeks before the game launched, 80% of them were waylaid like this." The subreddit spent Tuesday arguing about it: a thread calling it review-bombing drew nearly 700 comments, and another, titled "Furloughed vs Fired: leaving bad reviews harms employees," drew 1,500 upvotes making the opposite case.

The numbers say the protest has not moved the score. Steam showed Zero Company at 79 percent positive across about 7,500 reviews before the story broke. As we publish it stands at 80 percent positive across 14,829, and the store label has improved from Mostly Positive to Very Positive. The negative reviews that were already there were mostly about crashes and performance, which we covered in our PC settings and crash-fix guide.

Here is why we think the protest reviews are a mistake, and we say this as a site that would rather be wrong in public than quiet. Bit Reactor's own statement makes the return of the furloughed staff contingent on the game succeeding. A review that lowers the score lowers sales, and lower sales make the outcome the reviewer is angry about more likely, not less. The people it punishes are the ones who built the game and are waiting to hear whether they have a job. If you want to register anger, the studio's leadership and EA are on record and reachable; the store page is not where either of them lives.

Should you still buy it

Yes, with one honest caveat. The game on the disc is finished, and it is excellent; nothing in this story changes what is in the box. What it does put a question mark over is what comes after the box. Bit Reactor announced on September 3, through its Discord, that a first patch for bugs and performance is coming next week, with no version number, date or fix list. A skeleton crew can ship a patch. Whether it can ship the second and third, or anything that looks like an expansion, depends on people being rehired, and that is the part nobody can promise you today.

So buy it for the campaign that exists, not for a roadmap, because right now there is not one. We will update this page when the patch lands and if the studio says anything about staff returning.

Sources

Game File (Stephen Totilo), September 1: the original report and the studio's statement. Kotaku, VGC and Aftermath, September 1, corroborating the 80 percent figure and carrying Zachariah Scott's LinkedIn post. Steam's store review counts at the time of writing. SteamDB for the concurrent peak and the weekly top sellers. The Zero Company Discord for the patch announcement, via the community wiki's patch log.