The studio that brought us Disco Elysium (while it still had its founders and main creators in it) recently launched ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, an “espionage RPG” letting you control a troubled agent on their final assignment. While the game received amazing reviews, including a 9/10 from us, it failed to reach any sort of commercial success, and the studio is now firing over 30 devs as a result.
ZA/UM announced this on Bluesky, saying that “up to 32” developers were served termination or “at-risk notices,” adding that it was forced to downsize because ZERO PARADES‘ poor commercial performance “has not enabled us to sustain a studio of our current size.”
The studio’s developers are part of the ZA/UM Workers’ Alliance union, so they do have some levels of protection in place for them, but it’s always sad to see so many hardworking artists lose their place in the industry for no particular reason.
— ZA/UM Studio (@zaumstudio.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T16:55:35.128Z
I’m saying this since I was looking to purchase ZERO PARADES one of these days, as everyone I saw talking about it only had good things to say, but the game, unfortunately, suffered from having a masterpiece of an older brother. Furthermore, ZA/UM’s founders and creators, who were the masterminds behind Disco Elysium, were controversially removed from the company, and a lot of people still held a grudge about that.
This meant that, no matter what, ZERO PARADES was fighting an uphill battle even if it turned out to be great. And it did, but even from its art style, one could deduce that they were making an attempt to be the next Disco Elysium at least spiritually if not literally.
However, with so much baggage attached to the game, it was always going to be a challenge for it to make a name for itself on its own merit, and, as we see, it didn’t really succeed in doing so, at least not in a mainstream, commercial sense.
The post Over 30 developers fired from Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM despite ZERO PARADES rave reviews appeared first on Destructoid.
