Bungie, the developer of Destiny and Destiny 2, and the upcoming Marathon, has had a maligned last few years where it has seen frequent expansion delays, middling new content (albeit a brilliant The Final Shape expansion), and high-level executives leaving the studio. Over the last year, we’ve seen the studio admit that it has lost the trust of the players, a rumour that it could lose it’s independence as part of the Sony Interactive Entertainment family, and even layoffs affecting around 7% of the team. Speaking about the latter point, now even more developers are losing their jobs.
In a blog post written by Bungie head honcho Pete Parsons, it has been affirmed that 220 jobs will be cut at Bungie and that this will equate to around 17% of the global workforce being axed. It’s said that these layoffs will affect all levels of Bungie, meaning high-level executives will be on the chopping block as will greener employees.
Parsons adds, “Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, all of which have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie. Our goal is to support them with the utmost care and respect. For everyone affected by this job reduction, we will be offering a generous exit package, including severance, bonus and health coverage.
“I realize all of this is hard news, especially following the success we have seen with The Final Shape. But as we’ve navigated the broader economic realities over the last year, and after exhausting all other mitigation options, this has become a necessary decision to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials.”
Parsons does use this news to also affirm that some additional changes will be made at Bungie, and this is where the earlier point about losing independence at Sony comes back into the equation. It’s noted that 155 jobs (around 12% of total employees) will be integrated into SIE over the next few quarters, and that further employees will be tasked with developing a new PlayStation Studios studio to help work on “an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe”.
Speaking about the layoffs again, Parsons explains how this came about, noting, “For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises. To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly. It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon.
“Additionally, in 2023, our rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, our quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall, and the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon the time needed to ensure both projects deliver at the quality our players expect and deserve. We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red.
“After this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change our course and speed, and we did everything we could to avoid today’s outcome. Even with exhaustive efforts undertaken across our leadership and product teams to resolve our financial challenges, these steps were simply not enough.”
There will still be around 850 employees working at Bungie on Destiny (no specific mention of Destiny 2, so perhaps this once again implies a third game?) and Marathon, but no doubt this massive change will be felt for the forseeable years all the same.