--- title: ZA/UM lays off 32 employees after Zero Parades: For Dead... description: ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium, has laid off 32 employees following the poor commercial performance of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies. The cuts affect... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/za-um-lays-off-32-employees-after-zero-parades-for-dead-spies-underperforms-commercially-esbf2eimg twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: ZA/UM lays off 32 employees after Zero Parades: For Dead Spies underperforms commercially | daily.dev og:description: ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium, has laid off 32 employees following the poor commercial performance of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies. The cuts affect... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/za-um-lays-off-32-employees-after-zero-parades-for-dead-spies-underperforms-commercially-esbf2eimg og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ESbf2eiMg.png og:image:alt: ZA/UM lays off 32 employees after Zero Parades: For Dead Spies underperforms commercially og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # ZA/UM lays off 32 employees after Zero Parades: For Dead Spies underperforms commercially **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 2 min read · 5 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium, has laid off 32 employees following the poor commercial performance of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies. The cuts affect all departments and represent roughly a third of the studio's workforce. The ZA/UM Workers' Alliance union was consulted during the process. This follows a previous round of layoffs in 2024 when around 20 employees were let go after three projects were cancelled. The studio has faced ongoing instability since its original co-creators departed, and continues to struggle commercially despite critical recognition. ## Content ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium, has laid off 32 employees following the poor commercial performance of its latest game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies. The cuts affect staff across all departments. If the studio's headcount was still near 100, that's roughly a third of the workforce gone. The studio released a statement acknowledging that sales "have not allowed it to sustain its current size," while insisting its artistic mission continues. The ZA/UM Workers' Alliance, a union formed under the IWGB in October 2025, was consulted during the redundancy process. Zero Parades received decent critical notices but clearly didn't find an audience. The most likely reason isn't hard to identify. In 2021, ZA/UM fired the original Disco Elysium creators — Robert Kurvitz, Helen Hindpere, and Aleksander Rostov — who later accused studio leadership of fraud. Fans largely sided with the ousted developers and boycotted the new game. That's a difficult hole to dig out of commercially, no matter how good the product is. This isn't the first round of cuts. In 2024, ZA/UM laid off around 20 employees after cancelling three projects, including a Disco Elysium sequel and expansion. The studio has been shedding staff and projects steadily since the original team's departure. The ousted creators, for their part, have moved on and founded three new studios between them. What's frustrating here is the familiar pattern: management makes decisions that poison the well, and the workers who had nothing to do with any of it end up losing their jobs. ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@a\_k\_a\_s\_h** · 2 upvotes > It's a tough reminder that layoffs often hit the people who had the least influence over the decisions that led there. whatever happened at the leadership level, it's the developers, artists, QA, and support staff who end up paying the price **@triptych** · 0 upvotes > let's hope the new studios snap up the available folks to help with the new games --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/za-um-lays-off-32-employees-after-zero-parades-for-dead-spies-underperforms-commercially-esbf2eimg) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"ZA/UM lays off 32 employees after Zero Parades: For Dead Spies underperforms commercially","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/za-um-lays-off-32-employees-after-zero-parades-for-dead-spies-underperforms-commercially-esbf2eimg","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/za-um-lays-off-32-employees-after-zero-parades-for-dead-spies-underperforms-commercially-esbf2eimg"},"datePublished":"2026-07-20T07:18:58.966Z","dateModified":"2026-07-20T20:17:30.191Z","description":"ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium, has laid off 32 employees following the poor commercial performance of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies. 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Akash Selvaraj","url":"https://daily.dev/a_k_a_s_h","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocKkr6_cJSXfBvRGhKz0t3c_DERYldYlZLnQEvbVjqh0ewYodeA4=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"let’s hope the new studios snap up the available folks to help with the new games","datePublished":"2026-07-21T16:46:27.783Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/ESbf2eiMg#c-OsKK7Y35O","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Andrew Wooldridge","url":"https://daily.dev/triptych","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/AOh14GjtK9AeEv6qEOr8kFfaIK5Jv_uu9M3D2_7Xr7jdCqo=s100"}}]} ```