Destiny 2 developer Bungie has announced plans to lay off 220 employees, have the remaining 155 positions acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and hand over work on one of its “incubator projects” to its newly formed PlayStation studio.
This change is shown in novel blog post written by Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, who called it “the most difficult changes we’ve ever had to make as a studio.” “Due to rising development costs and changes in the industry, as well as continuing economic conditions,” he continued, “it became clear that we needed to make significant changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts solely on Destiny and Marathon.”
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The 220 employees who were laid off represent “approximately 17%” of the studio’s workforce, and Parsons said they will be moving into “executive and senior leadership positions.” “Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues who have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie,” he added. “Our goal is to support them with the utmost care and respect. We will be offering a generous severance package to all those impacted by this reduction in workforce, including severance, bonus, and health insurance.”
Bungie is finally going to “spin off” development of one of its “incubator projects,” an unnamed action title set in an entirely novel sci-fi universe, to its newly formed PlayStation studio, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg it was suggested that 75 former Bungie employees would join the novel studio.
Overall, Bungie’s headcount will be reduced from 1,300 to 850 as a result of the changes. “For over five years, our goal has been to deliver games across three enduring, global franchises,” Parsons wrote. “To achieve that ambition, we created a number of incubator projects, each seeded by senior development leaders from our existing teams. Ultimately, we realized that this model was stretching our talent too gaunt, too rapid. It also forced our studio support structures to scale beyond what we could realistically support given our two major products in development—Destiny and Marathon.
“Furthermore, in 2023, our rapid expansion was met with a broad economic slowdown, a piercing decline in the gaming industry, our quality oversight on Destiny 2: Lightfall, and the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon the time they needed to ensure both projects delivered the quality our players expect and deserve. We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently breached, and we began operating in the red.
“Once this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change course and speed, and we did everything we could to avoid today’s outcome. Even with exhaustive efforts by our leadership and product teams to address our financial challenges, those steps were simply not enough.”
