Zero Company is an 80 from 3,153 reactions, and its loudest day didn't move it.

Star Wars Zero Company launched on August 27 with an unusual amount to prove. A turn-based tactics game in the XCOM mould, from a studio founded by XCOM veterans, published by EA, set during the Clone Wars, and arriving to a fanbase that has been burned before by licensed Star Wars games and by EA. Our pre-release read, built from 1,315 reactions to trailers and previews, locked at 82 on release day: high on the tactics and the setting, wary of the publisher and of performance.

We measure what people actually say about a game in public social media conversations, plus verified Steam reviews from people who own it, classified and scored nightly with the sample size printed next to every number. A week in, Zero Company sits at 80 from 3,153 reactions, our highest confidence tier. The hype was about right. Here is what the week looked like.

From 84 to 80 in three days, then flat

Friday morning, one day in, the game opened at 84 from 638 reactions. Saturday it was 81 from 1,037. Sunday, 80 from 1,444. Then it stopped moving: 81, 81, 80, 80 as the sample grew to 3,153. That is the shape of a real consensus. The launch-day crowd is always the friendliest, and a four-point settle while the sample multiplies fivefold is about as gentle a correction as a release week gets.

What an 80 is made of

The split from 3,153 reactions: 77% positive, 6% mixed, 17% negative. The aspect tallies say exactly where each share comes from. Gameplay scores 83 across 1,752 mentions, the most discussed thing about the game by a wide margin, and story scores 83 across 775. Graphics land at 69 from 291. Then it falls away. Value sits at 53 from 322 mentions, difficulty at 48 from 271, and performance at 18 from 680. That last number is the whole complaint. One in six things said about this game is about how it runs, and almost none of it is kind: PC drew 153 mentions at 18% positive, Xbox Series X|S drew 88 at 17%.

Who is saying what matters as much as what they say. Of the social reactions since release, 1,038 came from people who said they had played it, and 72% of those were positive against 10% negative. The 1,019 reactions from people who had not played it ran 42% positive and 31% negative. The people with the controller in their hands like this game a lot more than the people watching from outside. Steam tells the same story in harder numbers. Of 1,241 reviews, 96% are from verified purchases and 82% are thumbs up. Under two hours of play, only 39% recommend it. Between two and twenty hours, 82%. Past twenty hours, 90%. The longer people play Zero Company, the more they like it, which is not what a launch sunk by its performance usually looks like.

Tuesday: the loudest day of the week moved the score by nothing

On September 1 the conversation nearly tripled: 601 relevant social reactions in a day, against a weekend that ran under 230, and for the first time a day came in negative, 239 negative posts against 233 positive. The game itself did not change that day. The news did. Word broke that Bit Reactor had furloughed most of its staff before launch, and the studio drew 217 mentions in a single day, 173 of them negative in tone. Across the whole week Bit Reactor sits at 31% positive from 432 mentions, and EA at 16% from 43.

The score went from 81 to 81. That is by design. A reaction from someone who played the game outweighs a reaction from someone who heard something about it, and Tuesday's spike was 210 second-hand negative posts against 149 first-hand positive ones. A furlough is a story about the studio. The score is about the game, and the people playing the game were still saying on Tuesday what they had said on Friday.

The setting is the best-liked thing in the entire conversation. Star Wars as a backdrop draws 95% positive across 93 mentions. XCOM, the comparison every reaction reaches for, runs 78% positive across 73. Hawks, the lead, is at 73% across 48. Nobody is arguing about whether this is a good Star Wars story. They are arguing about whether it should have shipped when it did.

The verdict so far

An 80 at very high confidence from 3,153 reactions, two points under the 82 people expected before release, held through the noisiest day a launch can have. The tactics and the story are the reasons to play. Performance is the reason to wait for a patch, and 680 mentions say a lot of people are waiting. If you can live with the frame rate, the people who have put twenty hours in are telling you it is worth it.

Star Wars Zero Company's score updates every night as new reactions come in. The live number, the trend, and the full breakdown: See Star Wars Zero Company's live Real Score