In July, it became known that 450 employees were leaving the developer of Destiny 2, Bungie. As it turns out now, many executives, members of the so-called “C-Suite,” have also left the company in recent months, apparently quietly.
Who from the executive level has left? According to the site TheGamePost, some key individuals from management have left Bungie:
Ondraus Jenkis, the “Chief Strategy Officer,” had been with Bungie for 16 years. He left in October 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Jonny Ebert, who came in 2017 and worked as Chief Creative Officer for the last 5 years, has also left Bungie. This is evident from his Twitter bio.
Previously, the Chief Technology Officer Luis Villegas changed jobs: he switched during the acquisition to Sony.
Bungie had fired Chief Counsel Don McGowan in October 2023 as part of the merger with Sony. He had successfully sued Bungie for many millions of US dollars in 2023.
Top people left Bungie after working for years on nothing
Which departures hurt particularly? As Bungie has mentioned, Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy have also left the company. Smith was responsible for the highlights of the franchise: the raid The Glass Chamber and the expansion The Taken King.
Smith and Noseworthy had been working on a Destiny spinoff, Payback, for the last few years, but the project was canceled.
Pete Parsons, whom many consider the face of the crisis, remains at the company.
Fans discuss the Sony acquisition
How is this being discussed? On reddit, the layoffs are noted calmly. Here, the acquisition by Sony is seen as a disaster, as Destiny 2 has gone off course with the expansion “Lightfall” six months after the acquisition.
Some believe Sony now wants to minimize damage at Bungie and extract the important technology and know-how. This is how companies act with acquisitions that do not go as planned.
Others say that the developers at Bungie are highly qualified, but management has always been a weakness of the company.
Yet others have hope: history has shown that no matter how bad things were for Bungie, the company has always come back, stronger than before.
Bungie has gambled heavily
What is behind this: Even while releasing Destiny together with Activision-Blizzard, Bungie was working on its own vision and independence. They confidently set the goal of becoming a leading global entertainment company, collaborating with Chinese partners like NetEase on new games.
However, Bungie apparently got tangled up, starting too many projects with “cheap money” and hiring too many people. Driven by the acquisition by Sony, they continued down this path.
But the economic indicators worsened on several levels. Due to the changing economic situation, money suddenly was not as cheap anymore. Revenue from Destiny also dwindled due to the flop of the expansion Lightfall. Ultimately, Sony also applied pressure.
Destiny slipped into a financial crisis and had to lay off many people in the summer of 2024, and almost all projects were put on hold, except for Destiny itself and Marathon. The cancellation of new projects is doubly tragic, as developers like Luke Smith wasted the last few years high-paying their time on new games that will never be released. During that time, they could have helped make Destiny 2 as good as Bungie promises and fans demand: Destiny 2: The best people have been working on new Destiny for years – project is canceled, they are fired
