Highlights
- GameDiscoverCo estimates Star Wars Zero Company generated about $28M in gross revenue from direct Steam sales in August.
- Court materials reported by Game File describe a 2021 EA funding agreement intended to secure $50M for development.
- An Aug 12 filing said Bit Reactor furloughed “most” employees; one Game File source estimated about 80%.
At its peak, 77,889 people were playing Star Wars Zero Company on Steam at the same time. Only one Star Wars game, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, has ever drawn more concurrent players on the platform.
By then, most of Bit Reactor's employees were furloughed. They were still technically employed by the studio, but they were not being paid.
Zero Company finished first on Valve's global chart by revenue for the week of Aug 25 - Sep 1. GameDiscoverCo's Simon Carless estimates that the game sold about 650K copies and generated about $28M in gross revenue from direct Steam sales in August 2026.
The studio that made it had reached release without enough money to keep the full team working. Game File's Stephen Totilo reported that Bit Reactor had run out of most of its money well before the August 27 launch. A court filing dated August 12 said the company had furloughed “most” employees and terminated contractors. One source estimated that 80% of the team was affected. Another said only a skeleton crew remained on the active payroll to handle post-launch patches.
Disney described its external licensing in 2013 as a way of “minimizing the company's risk while achieving a broader portfolio.” 13 years later, its partners are producing a broader range of games. Zero Company came through EA and Respawn, which backed a specialist team to make a Star Wars tactics game.
Disney Promised Less Risk and More Games
Disney closed LucasArts on April 3, 2013, ending internal development at the company founded in 1982. Contemporary reports put the layoffs at roughly 150.
Disney said it was moving Star Wars from internal development to a licensing model, pairing lower risk for the company with a broader range of releases. Disney would no longer carry the expense of maintaining a large internal game studio between projects.
Steam
One month after the closure, Disney and Electronic Arts announced a multi-year exclusive agreement covering new Star Wars games for the core gaming audience. Disney retained rights in categories including mobile, social, tablet and online games, but the major console and PC pipeline was concentrated in one publisher.
This was external development, but much of Disney's plan still depended on one publisher's choice of projects. The LEGO games continued outside EA: Warner Bros. and TT Games released LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2016 and The Skywalker Saga in 2022.
EA Made Star Wars Valuable, but Narrow
From the May 2013 agreement to Lucasfilm's announcement of additional partners in January 2021, EA released four major Star Wars games on console and PC: Battlefront in 2015, Battlefront II in 2017, Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019 and Squadrons in 2020.
That is two large multiplayer shooters, a single-player action game, and a smaller-scale space combat game. EA also closed Visceral Games in 2017 and announced plans to rework its project, known as Ragtag, according to reporting by Kotaku's Jason Schreier. The publisher then cancelled the open-world game that followed at EA Vancouver in 2019.
In February 2021, EA said its Star Wars franchises had generated more than $3B in lifetime net bookings and sold 52M games. The figure bundled more than the four games released under the exclusive core-games arrangement. It included older titles such as Knights of the Old Republic and the mobile game Galaxy of Heroes, which EA said had produced $1B by itself. Even with that caveat, EA had turned the licence into a valuable business.
Steam
A handful of expensive projects moved through one publisher, and two were cancelled after years of work.
EA was not cut out when Lucasfilm changed course. Jedi: Survivor followed in 2023, after the non-exclusive future had been announced. EA also published Zero Company. The change was that Lucasfilm was opening its core-games strategy to a wider set of publishers.
Lucasfilm Opens the Door
Lucasfilm revived the Lucasfilm Games name in January 2021 and began announcing additional partners. Douglas Reilly, the division's vice president and general manager, described a plan to match a wider range of genres and platforms with teams suited to them.
Disney games executive Sean Shoptaw made the policy clearer in an interview with Wired's Eric Ravenscraft. EA would remain a strategic partner, but Lucasfilm now saw space for others. The existing EA agreement was still expected to run through 2023, while Lucasfilm was already announcing projects with other publishers.
Ubisoft Massive made the open-world Star Wars Outlaws. Bit Reactor built a single-player tactics game. Fuse Games is releasing a racing game this October, Star Wars: Galactic Racer.
Ubisoft called the launch of Outlaws “softer than expected” when it cut its financial targets in September 2024. A wider portfolio only increases the number and variety of bets.
Zero Company shows EA making a different kind of bet within that wider portfolio. Bit Reactor did not exist as an established studio waiting for the licence. The Star Wars commission helped create the company.
Bit Reactor Was Built for This Commission
Bit Reactor formed in January 2021 with two employees and a Star Wars project already secured, according to Maryland's Department of Commerce. It was publicly announced a year later by former Firaxis developers led by Greg Foertsch, art director on the modern XCOM games.
PC Gamer reported in 2024 that Bit Reactor employed 15 XCOM veterans, then about a third of the studio. Lucasfilm was backing a new team whose main qualification was deep experience in the tactics genre.
The formal chain still involves four companies. Disney and Lucasfilm own and license Star Wars, with Lucasfilm Games overseeing its use. EA publishes and funds Zero Company. Respawn Entertainment produces the project, while Bit Reactor leads development.
Steam
Totilo reported that a 2021 EA funding agreement was intended to secure $50M for development, though that is not the same as a confirmed $50M budget. The available record does not establish how much EA ultimately disbursed or how much the game cost.
The Broader Portfolio Finally Arrived
Zero Company is a single-player, turn-based tactics game, the kind of Star Wars project absent from EA's major releases during the eight years before Lucasfilm opened the pipeline.
It reached 77,889 concurrent players on Steam three days after release. SteamDB records only LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga higher, at 82,517. Jedi: Survivor peaked at 67,855, while Jedi: Fallen Order reached 46,550.
GameDiscoverCo's estimates offer a separate measure of commercial scale, but no official sales total has been released. Its August chart placed Zero Company fourth across paid and free-to-play games by estimated Steam gross revenue, and the top three are all free-to-play.
Fuse Games was formed in 2023 by former Criterion leaders with experience making racing games and vehicle combat for Battlefront. Its first title is Star Wars: Galactic Racer, developed by Fuse and published by Secret Mode. Fuse has a core staff of about 70 people supplemented by external production partners.
Bit Reactor and Fuse both secured Star Wars projects for their debut games, with experienced tactics and racing developers leading the work.
The Risk Did Not Disappear
Bit Reactor furloughed most employees weeks before Zero Company launched on Aug 27. On Sep 3, EA Star Wars said a patch addressing bugs and performance problems would arrive the following week. The notice did not identify the developers doing that work or disclose how many remained on Bit Reactor's payroll.
A Bit Reactor representative told Game File that the furlough decision belonged to the studio, not EA or Disney, and was made before its launch performance was clear.
External licensing kept the cost of maintaining an internal Star Wars studio off Disney's books. Lucasfilm now works with more publishers, while EA has also expanded into new genres through Bit Reactor.
Bit Reactor said it hoped a successful launch would let it bring furloughed employees back with restored pay. Scott told Game File that the workers he had spoken to were less confident that everyone would return. As of Sep 7, the studio had announced no recall, and EA had published no sales, player, or revenue total for Zero Company.
A Steam peak can count how many players arrived at once. The next consequential number is how many of the people who made the game return to paid work.
