Star Wars: Zero Company is one of the year’s best games, and one of the best Star Wars games of all time, racking up damn good review scores (mine included) and netting itself plenty of good user reviews, too.
So, how has the game been selling? According to Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics, it’s off to a fairly strong start, although it can be difficult to judge these things when it comes to a game boasting the Star Wars license from a smaller team in a niche genre.
Alinea Analytics data – which is gathered using their own methods and therefore should be taken with a nice dash of salt – says that the game has surpassed 1 million copies sold, bringing in just under $50 million in revenue.
Unsurprisingly, the majority were on Steam where the turn-based tactical genre tends to do well. 69.9% (HA! Nice) of the copies sold were on Steam, with another 19.9% on PlayStation and 10.2% on Xbox.
There is one caveat: Elliott’s data doesn’t mention the EA Store and the Epic Store, both of which also sell the game. Neither will have sold as many copies as Steam, but they could add a decent chunk to the total.
And that total does matter. A few weeks before the game launched, developer Bit Reactor furloughed the majority of its staff because the studio reportedly ran out of money. The hope was that by furloughing the staff, Bit Reactor could survive long enough to bring in money from the release of Star Wars: Zero Company and bring the staff back to work. Right now, there’s no word on what’s happening within the company.
I’ve reached out for comment.
A million copies is a pretty decent start, especially for a turn-based tactics game. But the complicated situation with Bit Reactor makes it harder to judge if the cash it brings in will be enough to keep the team afloat, or if we can expect to see reports of lay-offs in the near-future.
Star Wars: Zero Company brings XCOM-style tactics to a galaxy far, far away, with a crew I loved spending time with and a more forgiving approach to getting them shot. Technical problems need sorting, but the characters and satisfying combat kept me happily coming back for more.