Today it was announced that Bungie, the developer of Destiny 2, has been affected by layoffs. Bloomberg and former employees reported this on social media. However, the exact extent of these measures is still unknown.
The layoffs became known: Today, layoffs at developer Bungie surprised both the gaming community and the industry. As Jason Schreier from Bloomberg reported via Twitter/X.
The exact extent is still unclear. Bungie CEO Pete Parsons apparently informed the affected employees about their layoffs on October 30 before a team meeting. Since then, several former employees have spoken out about their situation on social media, primarily from the fields of communication, PR, support, and sound design.
- For instance, Liana Ruppert, former community manager of Destiny 2, tweeted: ‘It breaks my heart for everyone affected… I’m now looking for opportunities.’ In addition to her, another position in the community area was eliminated with Sam Bartley.
- Also, Griffin Bennet, former social media lead, commented: ‘I was laid off by Bungie. It’s surreal to write this while sitting here thinking about what went wrong. I’m still processing everything, and although my first instinct is anger, I know I would regret what I would say.[…]’
So far, programmers and developers of Destiny 2 have not commented publicly on their layoffs, leading to the assumption that they were likely spared from the layoffs.
However, it has now been revealed that the composer of Destiny 2, Michael Salvatori, who has been responsible for the grand compositions for Destiny since 2014, has been laid off. On his own website, he replaced his career description with two words: ‘I’m fishing ;)’.
Nevertheless, it is still unclear exactly how many employees have been laid off in total. Players like SamiCkat are already collecting posts from the laid-off employees on Twitter to get a clearer picture. So far, 14 people have been listed there.
Other studios were also affected in 2023: Some reports suggest that this measure is part of a restructuring, while others cite economic challenges.
Another reason could be that Sony has scaled back its ambitions in the field of live service games compared to earlier announcements. Bungie would thus be just another PlayStation-owned studio affected by a wave of layoffs.
Former community manager dmg04 tweeted that they are “ongoing echoes of bad decisions” due to “poor management” that lead to such moments.
- Sony acquired Bungie for 3.2 billion euros in early 2022, but had to downsize staff in all PlayStation studios in 2023, partly due to delays.
- However, about 1.1 billion euros of Bungie’s purchase price was specifically intended for employee retention at the developer. This was reported in Sony’s quarterly report in February 2022, as Forbes reported.
- Recently, it was heard that Bungie has a net worth of over 1.8 billion euros. With Lightfall, they also achieved some of the highest revenues of all time.
This job reduction occurs in a year when publishers like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two, and Embracer have also laid off hundreds of employees, merged teams, or closed entire studios. However, some players feel, from all that is known, that Bungie should actually have all the means to avoid layoffs after the acquisition by Sony.
What does the future of Destiny 2 look like now? In addition to Destiny 2, Bungie is currently also working on other projects, such as the extraction shooter Marathon. Things are also not going well with Destiny 2. After Lightfall, players were disappointed with the story and delivered gameplay, and many players initially did not want to invest more upfront praise into the company with their DLC pre-order for “The Final Shape”.
The current developments also raise questions about the future of Destiny 2 and the new projects. Players are concerned that this could now be the fateful end of Destiny and explained the lack of love in recent months for the game, which enables the existence of Bungie and funds their future.
So far, neither Sony nor Bungie have directly commented on the layoffs and changes, so one can only speculate on the reasons. Only the CEO of Bungie shared his regrets on Twitter, which the Destiny-related service website blueberriesGG labeled as “tone-deaf statement”.
Today is a sad day at Bungie as we say goodbye to colleagues who have all had a significant impact on our studio. What these extraordinary people have contributed to our games and to the Bungie culture has been immense and will continue to be an important part of Bungie in the future. These are truly talented people. If you have open positions, I would highly recommend each and every one of them.
wrote Bungie CEO via Twitter/X
The gaming community continues to await more firsthand information about the future of the studio and its projects. It is a highly competitive shooter landscape and one is curious how Bungie will tackle this challenge now.
We have requested a statement from Bungie regarding the layoffs on October 31. If new information arises, you will of course be informed about it on MeinMMO.
Recently, by the way, Epic was also affected, leading to the layoff of 830 employees for cost reasons: Steam rival Epic fires 830 employees, sells a money rain in Fortnite the same day
