A team consisting of industry veterans that have worked on Gears of War, Civilization and, of course, XCOM, Bit Reactor is a brand-new studio working on Star Wars: Zero Company. More than just an XCOM clone, the upcoming real-time strategy game puts players in the role of the titular Zero Company in the “twilight of the Clone Wars”.
It’s not often that a new studio gets the chance to work with one of the most iconic licenses of all time, although with newcomer Fuse Games working on Star Wars: Galactic Racer the team isn’t alone in its good fortune.
As it turns out, the studio was able to grab the license due to the help of Call of Duty and Titanfall creator Vince Zampella, who sadly passed just before Christmas 2025 in a fatal car accident. Bit Reactor founder Greg Foertsch explained, after leaving Firaxis, he envisioned a new Star Wars strategy game, it didn’t originally use the Star Wars license.
“I’m sitting in my office with the lights out and my computer on, my wife’s asleep, my kids are asleep, and the phone rings,” the founder told PCGamer. “It’s this number that I don’t recognise. For some reason I answered it, and the voice on the other end said, ‘Hey, Greg, this is Vince Zampella. I heard you have a game you want to make. Can you tell me about it?’”
On the phone call, Zampella pitched the idea of turning the strategy game into a Star Wars title. “Do you think you can make a Star Wars game with this?” Foertsch remembers the iconic game designer asking.
“I said, ‘Sure, different game, but yeah, absolutely’. Meanwhile, I’m thinking, ‘This is insane, right? Like this is crazy. It’s Star Wars’ And so I said, ‘Yah, I can do that.’ And Vince was just like, ‘Pitch me.’”
Obviously, Bit Reactor pitched the right game. LucasArts agreed to hand out the license, EA agreed to publish the game, and Bit Reactor started to make it. While it may be a game in the same vein as Foertsch’s previous work on XCOM, it’s not just a clone of that game.
Foertsch explains that the game is wholly about the gameplay, although it will have the same flair and cinematic gravitas you’d expect of a Star Wars game. “Depth doesn’t cost you elegance,” he explained, adding that games should still have great graphics and storytelling if possible.
Star Wars: Zero Company doesn’t currently have a release date at the time of publication, and it’s not even known if the game is going to release later this year. Nevertheless, it is a fantastic-looking game, and it’s definitely going to fill a whole that’s been left absent by the XCOM series.
