The first company to grant time off for *Shadow Blade Zero* has emerged—and it’s them again.

With less than a week to go before the official release of *Shadow Blade Zero*, the much-loved holiday scene is making a comeback.

Recently, game publisher Gamirror Games issued a company-wide announcement: Since the CEO and COO need to conduct a “review” of a key project on October 29, the entire company will have the day off, and each employee will receive a deluxe edition of *Shadow Blade Zero*.

At the end of the notice, Gamirror Games included a friendly reminder: the company also allows employees to take compensatory time off within 30 days and encourages them to combine it with the weekend to create a four-day break so they can enjoy the game to their heart’s content.

This notice looks somewhat familiar.

In August 2024, on the eve of the release of *Black Myth: Wukong*, this was the first game company to announce that the entire staff would be given time off and that every employee would receive a free digital deluxe edition of the game. At the time, it was still known as Gamera Games. Two years later, the tradition of granting the entire staff time off for the release of a major title remains.

It has long been a tradition in the industry to give employees time off on the release date of a major title. When *Cyberpunk 2077* launched, *Mush Dash* developer PeroPeroGames gave its staff a day off;Pocketpair, the developer of *Paru: The Phantom Beast*, gave its entire staff four days off for the release of *Elden Ring*; and when *Star Rail* entered open beta in 2023, some Chinese companies also gave their employees a day off on the open beta launch date.

Interestingly, Feng Ji, the producer of *Black Myth: Wukong*, is also eagerly awaiting *Blade & Soul Zero* on Weibo: “Nine days to go—it feels like an eternity.”

Previously, the official team behind *Shadow Blade Zero* confirmed that the game had surpassed 3 million wishlist entries across all platforms, and after pre-orders opened on August 12, it quickly topped Steam’s global best-seller chart.

According to estimates by the overseas data firm Alinea Analytics, pre-orders for *Shadow Blade Zero* on Steam have reached approximately 500,000 copies, corresponding to estimated revenue of about $24 million. By any measure, *Shadow Blade Zero* is a blockbuster-level AAA game.

*Shadow Blade Zero* was developed by Lingyoufang (S-GAME). The game will launch on PS5 and PC at 10:00 a.m. on October 29, initially as a digital release; a physical PS5 version is expected to be released in 2027. Media reviews are scheduled to be released on October 26. We’ll find out how it fares in a week.