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

ZA/UM Studio, the developer behind Disco Elysium, is cutting up to 32 employees across all departments after its spiritual successor Zero Parades: For Dead Spies failed to generate enough revenue to sustain the studio at its current size. The announcement came via a statement posted to the studio's Bluesky account on Friday.

In the statement, ZA/UM confirmed that Zero Parades received critical acclaim but that its commercial performance fell short of what the studio needed. Redundancy and at-risk notices have gone out to up to 32 staff across all departments. The studio says it has been working with representatives of the ZA/UM Workers' Alliance throughout the process — the same union that, as of October 2025, became the first recognised video game developers' union in the UK, affiliated with the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain. ZA/UM had around 100 employees at that point. The statement closes with a call to other studios to consider hiring the departing staff, and a line that the layoffs change "the shape of ZA/UM, but not its purpose."

The reaction online has been harsh, and the studio's troubled history explains why. Disco Elysium director Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov publicly accused ZA/UM management — specifically Ilmar Kompus and Tõnis Haavel — of gaining ownership of the studio and its IP through fraud, and claimed they were fired after requesting financial records. Kompus and Haavel denied those allegations and issued their own counter-claims. That dispute has dragged through public statements and legal channels for years, leaving the studio's reputation badly damaged with a significant portion of the Disco Elysium fanbase.

Social media response to Friday's news has been largely unsympathetic toward the studio itself, even among those who expressed genuine concern for the workers losing their jobs. One Bluesky user summed up a common sentiment: they felt terrible for the employees but believed ZA/UM had "poisoned the brand" and would "fall sooner or later." With replies disabled on both X and Bluesky, the quote-post reactions have been running even harsher than that.