Two months after the release of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, the followup to its stunning detective RPG Disco Elysium, Studio ZA/UM says the game hasn’t sold as well as needed, and as a result it’s laying off employees.
“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,” ZA/UM wrote in a message shared on social media. “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 has a whole.”
Zero Parades is not as universally beloved as Disco Elysium: Some reviewers found it outstanding, but others, including our own, felt it didn’t quite come together. “No matter how fun or well-designed individual aspects of the game are, they all swirl around Hershel’s fundamentally nonsensical approach to international espionage,” Maddi Chilton wrote in her 66% review.
“Unfortunately, it seems like a consequence of transplanting Disco Elysium’s structure directly onto Zero Parades without considering how it actually plays. It’s jarring to have little sister spy walking around rambling and blustering in exactly the same way as big brother cop.”