Yesterday we heard reports that Bungie, the Destiny 2 developer recently purchased by Sony by $3.6 billion, was undergoing a round of layoffs, but we didn’t get a lot of detail on the scope of what was going on or reasons for the studio shedding employees. Well, today Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier provided some additional information, and the picture he paints of business at Bungie is a bit gloomy.
According to Schreier, Bungie has cut around 8 percent of its workforce, or over 100 people. While many of the people let go were from PR, HR, and other support divisions, some core developers have been laid off as well. So why is Bungie laying people off? During a recent meeting, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons reportedly revealed that revenue was 45 percent below projections for the year — a pretty drastic miss in an industry where continual growth is the ideal. This revenue shortfall was directly blamed on the unenthusiastic reception to Destiny 2: Lightfall, an expansion that was supposed to deliver the penultimate chapter in the storyline that’s been running since Destiny began, but was ultimately criticized for a lack of meaningful story developments and content.
This sheds some additional light on previous reports that Bungie has delayed Destiny 2: The Final Shape expansion from early 2024 to the summer of that year. The storyline-ending expansion is said to be getting good, but not great, feedback from testers and Bungie obviously needs it to deliver. Meanwhile, Bungie’s revival of their Marathon franchise is said to have been pushed to 2025.
Obviously, this turn of events can’t make PlayStation happy as Bungie was supposed to be the cornerstone of a new live-service-focused push. Layoffs have also recently hit studios like Naughty Dog and Media Molecule, and analysts believe PlayStation is likely in the midst of a larger restructuring.
What are your thoughts on this situation? Can Bungie turn their Destiny 2 business around? Or is the franchise simply running out of gas? What does this all mean for Sony’s larger live service ambitions?
