ZA/UM Studio Announces Layoffs Affecting 32 Employees
Quick Look
- ZA/UM Studio, known for Disco Elysium, announced layoffs impacting up to 32 employees across all departments.
- The studio attributed the redundancies to the weak commercial performance of its latest game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Layoffs are a continuing trend in the video game industry. ZA/UM Studio's latest game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, was released only a few months prior to these layoffs.
Layoffs in the video game industry just keep coming. In a post on social media, ZA/UM Studio, the developer and publisher of Disco Elysium and more recently, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, announced that it "served redundancy or at-risk notices impacting up to 32 of our colleagues across all departments at ZA/UM Studio."
The news of the layoffs comes only a few months after the studio's latest game was released in May. ZA/UM Studio attributed the layoffs to the weak "commercial performance" of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, which "has not enabled us to sustain a studio of our current size." According to SteamDB, the espionage RPG hit an all-time peak of 3,177 players around the time of its release, but has steadily declined since.
Open Questions
- Which specific departments were most affected?
- What is the long-term outlook for ZA/UM Studio?
- How will this impact future game development?
