ZA/UM cuts up to 32 roles after Zero Parades underperforms

ZA/UM has served redundancy or at-risk notices affecting up to 32 staff across every department, the Disco Elysium developer announced roughly two months after the release of its second game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies.

In a statement posted to social media, the studio said that while Zero Parades was released to critical acclaim, its commercial performance had not enabled ZA/UM to sustain a studio of its current size. The work of those affected, it said, had left its mark on both the game and the studio as a whole.

Union consulted on the process

ZA/UM said it consulted representatives of the ZA/UM Workers’ Alliance during the redundancy process. UK staff at the studio unionised as the Workers’ Alliance in October last year, represented by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, in what was recognised as the first video game union in the UK games industry. Rock Paper Shotgun reported that the studio had almost 100 staff when the union was announced, which would place this round at roughly a third of the workforce.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz after the union was formed, marketing manager Poppy Ingham said the alliance existed so the studio could work as a collaborative project between workers and management, and that while legal protection covered only UK workers, colleagues at the studio’s Porto and Tallinn arms were included in its meetings.

A second round in two years

This is the second set of layoffs at ZA/UM in recent years. Around 20 employees were affected in 2024 following the cancellation of three games, among them a sequel and an expansion to Disco Elysium. Studio president Ed Tomaszewski told GamesIndustry.biz that staff were reassigned after the first two cancellations, but that the cancellation of the expansion resulted in layoffs, which he attributed to the financial realities of running an independent studio.

Several developers who left ZA/UM in earlier rounds have since founded their own studios — among them Tangerine Antarctic, Hopetown and Red Rooster — working on spiritual successors to Disco Elysium. None has released a game yet.