The tactical strategy game Star Wars Zero Company has attracted more than a million players, and its success has allowed its developers to return to work. Back in the summer, the studio behind the game placed most of its team on unpaid leave after running out of money. Together with Star Wars: Galactic Racer, another new studio’s debut, the game has prompted talk of a golden age for Star Wars games.
A Million in Six Weeks
Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher, announced on social media approximately 43 days after release that more than a million people had played it, according to Push Square. The strategy game was developed by Bit Reactor in collaboration with Respawn Entertainment and Lucasfilm Games. It is Bit Reactor’s first game.
It is a turn-based tactics game in which players command a squad of operatives towards the end of the Clone Wars. Its mechanics resemble those of XCOM, one of the best-known tactical strategy series. The publisher has not provided separate figures for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Final trailer for Star Wars Zero Company. Source: EA Star Wars YouTube channel
Developers Without Pay
Approximately three weeks before the game’s August 27 release, Bit Reactor placed most of its employees on unpaid leave and terminated agreements with contractors. Game File first reported the news, while Shacknews notes that the funds set aside for development had effectively run out by that point.
A Bit Reactor representative stressed that the studio itself had made the decision, rather than EA or Disney. Just over a month later, Bit Reactor CEO Greg Foertsch announced that most of the team was returning.
Analysts at Alinea Analytics estimated that the game had sold approximately one million copies in its first month alone. At the base price of $59.99, that would amount to around $60 million in gross revenue, although some copies were sold at a discount and others as more expensive editions. How much of that revenue goes to Bit Reactor itself remains unknown, as the terms of its agreement with EA have not been disclosed.
Racing from the Creators of Burnout
Another new studio’s debut under a Lucasfilm Games licence, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, was released on October 6. It was developed by Fuse Games, a British studio based in Guildford, founded in 2023 by Matt Webster, the former general manager of Criterion Games—the team behind the Burnout series.
The game takes place in the galaxy’s Outer Rim, and its characters include Sebulba, young Anakin Skywalker’s racing rival on Tatooine. We have previously explored how realistic planets such as Tatooine are. Meanwhile, a meteorite named after the same Tunisian town that gave the planet its name has revealed clues about the Solar System’s past.
According to Space.com writer Fran Ruiz, the Burnout-style racer did not come from EA because the publisher had reportedly reassigned Criterion to work on Battlefield. The idea of arcade racing with speeders and podracers found another route to players.
Fuse Games secured funding and the licence through publisher Secret Mode and Lucasfilm Games. The game’s Deluxe Edition costs $79.99, while the Collector’s Edition, which includes a physical speeder model, costs $159.99.
Licences Beyond EA
Until 2021, major Star Wars games for consoles and PC were predominantly published by EA, which obtained an exclusive licence from Disney in 2013. LEGO games remained a notable exception. Projects are now coordinated by Lucasfilm Games, with rights granted to different publishers and studios.
This also paved the way for Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, a major open-world game whose system requirements we previously covered. In an EA press release, Lucasfilm Games vice president Douglas Reilly described the Bit Reactor team as “genre veterans,” while the company regards Galactic Racer as part of its plan to create original stories specifically for games.
Publisher Secret Mode has not yet disclosed sales figures for Galactic Racer. Those numbers will show whether the second new studio can match Bit Reactor’s result.
