Bungie’s latest layoffs reportedly come ahead of Destiny 2’s Final Shape expansion’s “sensational performance” and are “inevitable” even if the much-hyped, critically acclaimed DLC becomes a massive commercial success.
That’s according to a report from Stephen Totilo’s Game File, which cites numerous sources as saying this week’s layoffs were planned as early as early 2024. The layoffs will result in 220 Bungie employees being laid off, with more employees moving to Sony Interactive Entertainment and a new PlayStation studio, which is developing one of Bungie’s “incubation projects.”
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The report also cites an anonymous former Bungie employee as saying that if the studio is not acquired by Sony in 2022, “the other possibility is bankruptcy.” Bungie allegedly repeatedly failed to meet financial targets set by Sony, leading its management to conclude last year – seemingly under threat from the studio’s autonomy – that it would “slash spending to show Sony executives that it was taking its financial situation seriously.”
Those cuts are now coming in two batches, with the latest taking place in late October 2023. The report states that the studio has been losing money since the release of Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion in February 2023.
“I think Sony overpaid for Bungie,” one former employee told Totilo. “I think Bungie sold something they couldn’t deliver.” The view of developers quoted in the report is that they are more unhappy with Bungie’s management than they are with Sony, which seems to reflect the sentiment expressed by former employees on social media after the company announced layoffs and CEO Pete Parsons faced calls for his resignation.
In the layoff announcement, Parsons wrote that 2023 is a year of “rapid expansion” for Bungie. [run] He added that the studio was “overambitious” and that it “subsequently exceeded its financial security,” causing Bungie to “go into the red.”
Currently, Bungie’s remaining employees will focus all their energy on “Destiny 2” and “Marathon”. In March this year, news came out that the director of the latter had been replaced.
