Bungie Lays Off 220 Employees, New First-Part Studio Formed to Work on Bungie’s Incubation Project

Bungie, the developer behind the Destiny franchise, which is now owned by Sony, has announced today that they are laying off 220 employees due to “rising cost of development and industry shifts.”

The announcement was made by Bungie CEO Pete Parsons who confirmed that the 220 employees account for 17% of the studio’s workforce, and affects every level of the company including most of Bungie’s executive and senior leader roles. This news comes just after Bungie has released Destiny 2’s latest expansion, The Final Shape, which saw record-setting numbers log in to the game.

As part of the announcement, Parsons mentions that they are “deepening” the studio’s integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment (or otherwise known as the PlayStation division), with about 155 of Bungie staff being migrated over to SIE in the “next few quarters.” Parsons adds that Sony has worked tirelessly with the studio to identify roles for as many studio staff as possible, so they can “save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force.”

Also of note, Bungie is working with PlayStation Studios leadership to spin out one of their incubation projects, which is an action game set in a brand-new science-fiction universe. This incubation project will be developed by a new studio formed within PlayStation Studios, and seems to be something that Bungie and Sony both want to see moving forward.

Here’s Parsons’ explanation on why this employee redundancy happened:

Let’s unpack how we ended up in this position; it’s important to understand how we got here.

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.

As a result, today we must say goodbye to incredible talent, colleagues, and friends

Parsons states that there are over 850 team members left building Destiny and Marathon, and they will talk about those projects in another space and time.

For those affected, we here at MP1st hope they land on their feet fast. This marks yet another round of studio layoffs joining the likes of Microsoft, and even Sony. As far as development jobs go, 2024 has been very, very toxic so far.

Related Reading:

• Former Bungie Staff Speaks Out on Destiny 2 The Final Shape DLC: Blames Crunch for Missteps, Criticizes Layoffs Process
• Report: More Xbox Job Cuts on the Way, Hi-Fi Rush Sequel and Arkane Immersive Sim Were Planned
• Former Call of Duty Devs’ Deviation Games Closes Doors Without Releasing a Game

[Source: Bungie]

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