ZA/UM Lays Off Up to 32 Staff Two Months After Zero Parades Launch

Critical Praise Was Not Enough

ZA/UM, the studio behind the beloved RPG Disco Elysium, has announced layoffs affecting up to 32 employees, just two months after the release of its latest game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies. The UK-based studio posted a statement on X/Twitter on July 17, 2026, acknowledging that while the game launched in May to “critical acclaim, its commercial performance has not enabled us to sustain a studio of our current size.”

“We have served redundancy or at-risk notices impacting up to 32 of our colleagues across all departments at ZA/UM Studio,” the message read. “Their work has made a lasting difference and left its mark on Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, and the studio as a whole.”

The studio added a pointed appeal to the broader industry: “To anyone currently hiring, please consider the colleagues leaving ZA/UM.”

Zero Parades: For Dead Spies earned an 83 on Metacritic after its May 21 launch on PC and PS5, according to IGN’s reporting. That is a respectable score by most measures, but it apparently was not enough to translate into the kind of sales that could keep a full studio running. The gap between critical reception and commercial reality is a painful one, and ZA/UM is far from the first studio to find itself caught there.

A Studio That Has Seen Better Days

This is not ZA/UM’s first brush with upheaval. The studio’s troubles became public in October 2022, when key developers including writer and designer Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and art and design lead Aleksander Rostov were reported to have left involuntarily. Weeks after that, Kurvitz filed a lawsuit against the company. He and Rostov alleged that Ilmar Kompus and Tonis Haavel of Tutreke OU had obtained control of ZA/UM through fraud. ZA/UM denied those claims and launched its own accusations in a statement to Gamesindustry.biz.

The fallout from that period sent ripples across the industry. Former ZA/UM developers went on to form multiple spinoff studios. Dark Math Games and Longdue Games both announced projects in October 2024, with Summer Eternal revealing itself shortly after. Those studios are building games called XXX Nightshift and Hopetown, respectively, carrying forward at least some of the spirit of the original team.

The current round of layoffs is also not ZA/UM’s first. Back in 2024, around 24 employees were affected by cuts, and that same update included the cancellation of a standalone Disco Elysium expansion.

What Remains

ZA/UM says it will continue working with members of its Workers’ Alliance union throughout what it described as a “difficult process.” The studio’s statement was careful to draw a line between structure and identity: the layoffs will change “the shape of ZA/UM, but not its purpose.”

“Our artistic standards remain unchanged: we will persist,” the studio wrote.

That is a significant claim for a studio carrying this much history. Disco Elysium remains one of the most acclaimed RPGs ever made, earning a 9.6 out of 10 from IGN and winning multiple categories at The Game Awards 2019. The pressure of following something that influential is enormous, and Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, despite its solid reception, appears to have fallen short of the commercial performance ZA/UM needed.

Thirty-two people across all departments now face an uncertain road ahead. Whether ZA/UM can genuinely rebuild around a leaner structure, and what kind of studio emerges on the other side, remains an open question.