Bungie to lose 220 staff as it takes “a new path”

• The new redundancies represent 17% of the company’s current total
• “We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red”

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Bungie, the Sony-owned video games development giant perhaps best known for its Halo and Destiny franchises have announced the loss of 220 staff as the company seeks to redress losses and prepare for future endeavours.

This morning – US time – managing director of Bungie Pete Parsons took to the company’s official blog to give a lengthy statement outlining the company’s state of play and reluctance in making 17% of its staff redundant.

Parsons cites the rising costs of game production as the reasons for the move. Bungie are of course a triple-A studio who are no stranger to huge teams and huge costs and balancing both being the risk factor in achieving huge PC and console wins.

As yet the company is yet to make a major move in mobile, despite previous rumours which were seemingly scotched by the company’s last round of redundancies.

“Quality miss”

In the statement Parsons goes so far as to address “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,” he explained.

Most specifically Parsons highlights a need to “make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon” in order to for the company to continue in the way he intends.

“Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, all of which have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie,” he said. “Our goal is to support them with the utmost care and respect. For everyone affected by this job reduction, we will be offering a generous exit package, including severance, bonus and health coverage.

“These actions will affect every level of the company, including most of our executive and senior leader roles.”

Deeper ties with Sony

Futhermore the company intends to deepen its ties with parent company Sony who acquired the company in 2022. This will involve the “integration” of 155 roles or roughly 12% of Bungie in a transition to take “the next few quarters.”

“SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify roles for as many of our people as possible, enabling us together to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force.”

Plus an early project – unnamed and unnanounced – will now become the property of a new studio set up within PlayStation Studios to continue its development.

Too much, too thin

These latest changes are a sad end to Bungie’s promising expansion plans post Sony takeover with the company aiming to run three successful franchises. However the model has – in the words of Parsons – “stretched our talent too thin, too quickly”.

Parson remains upbeat on Bungie’s continued success however. “Bungie will continue to make great games. We still have over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon, and we will continue to build amazing experiences that exceed our players’ expectations.    

“There will be a time to talk about our goals and projects, but today is not that day. Today, our focus is on supporting our people,” he concludes.

Read the full statement here.