ZA/UM laying off up to 32 staff after Zero Parades underperforms commercially

ZA/UM Studio is cutting up to 32 employees across all departments, citing the poor commercial performance of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies. The studio confirmed the layoffs in a statement posted to Bluesky on Friday afternoon.

Zero Parades launched to critical acclaim but, according to ZA/UM, its sales were not enough "to sustain a studio of our current size." The studio had roughly 100 employees as of October 2025, when its staff formed the first recognised video game developers' union in the UK, represented by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain. ZA/UM says it consulted with representatives of the ZA/UM Workers' Alliance throughout the process. The full statement closes with a call to other studios: "To anyone currently hiring, please consider the colleagues leaving ZA/UM."

ZA/UM has been one of the most turbulent studios in recent memory. Disco Elysium — released in 2019 and widely regarded as a landmark RPG — was followed by years of public and legal disputes. The game's original director Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov accused management figures Ilmar Kompus and Tõnis Haavel of gaining ownership of the studio and its IP fraudulently, and claimed they were fired after requesting financial records. Kompus and Haavel denied any fraud. Zero Parades was ZA/UM's attempt to move forward under that shadow, but the commercial result has now forced another painful restructuring.

Reaction on social media has been sharply critical — less toward the workers affected and more toward the studio's leadership and its track record. One Bluesky commenter summed up a widely shared sentiment: the departing staff deserve better, but ZA/UM's brand has been damaged badly enough that recovery looks difficult. Replies are disabled on both X and Bluesky, so quote posts are the only visible community response, and most are far harsher than that measured take.