Studio ZA/UM, the developer behind Disco Elysium and its recent followup Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, has filed redundancy paperwork that could see up to 32 employees lose their jobs. The cuts, announced through the studio's social media accounts, hit "all departments" and land only two months after Zero Parades released.
The reason given is money, not reception. "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 wrote. The post said the affected workers' contributions "made a lasting difference" and "left its mark" on both the game and the studio, and it closed with an appeal for other developers to consider hiring them.
A studio still reeling from Disco Elysium's fallout
As Game Developer notes, these post-launch layoffs are the latest in a long run of turmoil that began with the departure of two Disco Elysium co-creators. Game director Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov, along with other founding staff, later launched their own companies, including Darkmath Games, Longdue Games, and Summer Eternal.
The split was bitter. ZA/UM CEO Ilmar Kompus accused Kurvitz and Rostov of creating a toxic work environment, while the pair said they were pushed out by executives driven by corporate greed. Reporting from GamesIndustry.biz and People Make Games suggested both accounts could hold some truth. The studio cut an undisclosed number of jobs in February 2024, and remaining staff formally unionized in October 2025. At that point the ZA/UM Workers' Alliance reported the company employed roughly 100 people worldwide. If that figure still held at Zero Parades' launch, today's cuts represent close to a third of the workforce. The studio says it is continuing to consult with the union.
Critical praise, commercial miss
Zero Parades did not land as universally as Disco Elysium. Some reviewers loved it, others were lukewarm. PC Gamer's own review scored it 66%, with Maddi Chilton writing that its individual pieces never cohered around "Hershel's fundamentally nonsensical approach to international espionage." She argued the game transplanted Disco Elysium's structure without accounting for how it actually plays.
Ahead of the game's reveal, PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield had predicted the studio faced a steep climb, writing that Zero Parades "will have to be spectacular to win back a hostile fanbase." Much of the online reaction to the layoffs directed anger at ZA/UM's leadership rather than the developers, with some players arguing the game's underperformance was partly the result of Disco Elysium fans refusing to buy from a company they no longer trusted.
Despite the cuts, ZA/UM struck a defiant note, saying the move "changes the shape of ZA/UM, but not its purpose" and insisting its artistic standards remain unchanged.
What this means for players
For anyone hoping Zero Parades: For Dead Spies would mark a stable second act for ZA/UM, this is a discouraging signal about the studio's future output. A team down roughly a third of its staff will find it harder to support the current game or commit to whatever comes next. The bigger question for narrative RPG fans is where the talent lands: with former founders now spread across Darkmath Games, Longdue Games, and Summer Eternal, the creative energy behind Disco Elysium is scattered across several new studios worth watching.