Mass layoffs at Bungie

[Wirdschowerdn]

The New Path for Bungie​

2h - Pete Parsons​

This morning, I’m sharing with all of you some of the most difficult changes we’ve ever had to make as a studio. Due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions, it has become clear that we need to make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon. 

That means beginning today, 220 of our roles will be eliminated, representing roughly 17% of our studio’s workforce.  

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

Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, all of which have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie. 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.

I realize all of this is hard news, especially following the success we have seen with The Final Shape. But as we’ve navigated the broader economic realities over the last year, and after exhausting all other mitigation options, this has become a necessary decision to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials.

We are committing to two other major changes today that we believe will support our focus, leverage Sony’s strengths, and create new opportunities for Bungie talent.

First, we are deepening our integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment, working to integrate 155 of our roles, roughly 12%, into SIE over 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.   

Second, we are working with PlayStation Studios leadership to spin out one of our incubation projects – an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe – to form a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue its promising development.  

This will be a time of tremendous change for our studio.

Let’s unpack how we ended up in this position; it’s important to understand how we got here.

For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises. To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly.  It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon. 

Additionally, in 2023, our rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, 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.

After this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change our course and speed, and we did everything we could to avoid today’s outcome. Even with exhaustive efforts undertaken across our leadership and product teams to resolve our financial challenges, these steps were simply not enough.  

As a result, today we must say goodbye to incredible talent, colleagues, and friends.

This will be a challenging time at Bungie, and we’ll need to help our team navigate these changes in the weeks and months ahead. This will be a hard week, and we know that our team will need time to process, to ask questions, and to absorb this news. Today, and over the next several weeks, we will host team meetings and town halls, team breakout sessions, and private, individual sessions to ensure we are keeping our communication open and transparent. 

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.

-pete

 

[lycanwarrior]

Looks like Sony pretty much taking over Bungie completely. Bungie no longer operates independently at this point.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Bungie was ruined the second they introduced a sprint button into Halo

 

[Hobo Elf]

220 people being only 17% of their workforce sounds rather unsustainable.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Fuck this overrated company.

 

[Baron Dupek]

lmao

they blamed CEO for spending cash on old cars and whatever, but that still nothing compared to CEO and higher up or shareholders...

oh and their most profitable game (ie the only one they work on in this decade) won't get 3rd part - talking about Destiny 3 under "Payback" alias

 

[d1r]

lmao

That is some next level cope.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

https://destinybulletin.com/news/bungie-canceled-destiny-3-payback/

Looks like they killed Destiny 3.

Sony must be delighted with their multi-billion investment.

 

[ind33d]

Destiny 3 allegedly cancelled. That has to be the most mismanaged IP in history. Imagine making a sequel on a different engine, planning to port the content from the first game, then slowly removing Destiny 2's campaign instead. Actual brain damage

 

[Old Hans]

good riddance. Bungie sucks ass

 

[lycanwarrior]

 

[lycanwarrior]

https://www.videogamer.com/news/my-...t-laid-off-today-former-bungie-employee-says/

“My maternity leave was supposed to start next Monday and I got laid off today,” former Bungie employee says​

 

[DemonKing]

“My maternity leave was supposed to start next Monday and I got laid off today,” former Bungie employee says

Not sure what the legal situation is where Bungie is based but I'm pretty sure getting laid off the day before starting maternity leave would be a good case for litigation in a lot of jurisdictions.

 

[Hobknobling]

Destiny 3 allegedly cancelled. That has to be the most mismanaged IP in history. Imagine making a sequel on a different engine, planning to port the content from the first game, then slowly removing Destiny 2's campaign instead. Actual brain damage

I recommend watching this talk:



It is a baffling admission of doing everything completely wrong and being proud of it.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

https://www.videogamer.com/news/my-...t-laid-off-today-former-bungie-employee-says/

“My maternity leave was supposed to start next Monday and I got laid off today,” former Bungie employee says​

Amurica fuck yeah!

 

[flyingjohn]

They hired over 400 people during the pandemic so this means nothing.They also spent months of works and millions on making a small grassy area that people won't even notice look good. Not to mention removing paid content. The game literally has no campaign now minus the season bullshit and dlc.
They represent the worst of modern gaming and deserve to die off.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Dark Souls II]

Damn, I guess they really should have tried making another good game after Oni (2001).

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Former Bungie Worker Claims Studio Faced Insolvency Without Sony Acquisition - ReportWorkers blame Bungie management for layoffs at Destiny 2 studio.​

By Kat Bailey

Updated: Aug 2, 2024 12:05 am

Posted: Aug 1, 2024 11:58 pm


Bungie misrepresented its finances and had significantly overextended itself when Sony acquired the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022, former workers claimed in a new Game File report published in the wake of Wednesday's layoffs.

It was apparently bad enough that at least one source described as a "well-connected former worker" went so far as to claim that Bungie faced dire consequences if the acquisition hadn't happened, saying that the "alternate history is insolvency."
Former workers claim that Destiny 2's The Final Shape failed to outsell Lightfall.
Their comments paint the picture of a studio that was struggling despite the success of Destiny and Destiny 2 due to supporting too many projects and other problems. Following the Sony acquisition, Game File's sources claim Bungie repeatedly missed its financial targets, leading to roughly 100 employees being laid off in November 2023.
A second round of layoffs followed on Wednesday, impacting another 220 people, or 17 percent of the studio's workforce, with another 155 being integrated elsewhere in Sony Interactive Entertainment. Bungie is also spinning out one of its incubation projects to form a new studio under the PlayStation banner.
Within Bungie, the layoffs had been anticipated for some time. In December 2023, IGN reported that the feeling within the studio was that it faced more reductions if The Final Shape didn't do well. But according to Game File's source, even The Final Shape being a major blockbuster success couldn't have stopped the layoffs. Indeed, with Destiny 2 on the wane some seven years after its original release, The Final Shape reportedly failed to outsell the previous expansion, Lightfall, despite being a critical success.

Former Bungie workers and other members of the games industry have been vocal in the wake of the layoffs, with many of them blaming the studio's leadership led by CEO Pete Parsons. Their sentiments were echoed by those in Game File's report, claiming that Bungie "sold things they were just not able to deliver." Parsons, for his part, blamed the cuts on the rising costs of development and "enduring economic conditions," confirming that the studio had been "running in the red" following delays to The Final Shape and Marathon.

Bungie is far from alone in being hit with layoffs, with other publishers including EA, Xbox, Riot, and others also introducing cutbacks in what has been a difficult year for the games industry. For now, it will continue to focus its efforts entirely on Destiny and the upcoming Marathon, which does not have a release date and is currently set for some time in 2025.

Terrific investment, Sony!

 

[Hell Swarm]

Bungie in name only

 

[Tyranicon]

I don't understand how someone can actually enjoy either of the Destiny games.

 

[Hobknobling]

I don't understand how someone can actually enjoy either of the Destiny games.

My read is that these games are for people who get easily addicted to gambling and get immense enjoyment from numbers going up and don't mind bland gameplay.

 

[what am i doing]

I don't understand how someone can actually enjoy either of the Destiny games.

I actually thought the original looked neat in terms of art direction and such, but because it was a console exclusive and I'm not going to buy what's basically an entire extra computer (that's locked down into uselessness for anything besides gaming) just because faggot developers were too lazy to compile for Windows, I didn't play it. Dodged a bullet there, from what I've heard.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I don't understand how someone can actually enjoy either of the Destiny games.

It's Multiplayer Halo single player. Enemies are fun to shoot and the game mechanics are simple to understand. Some times you just want to click right trigger and watch stuff die. It's the same appeal as Doom has.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Myth 4 will still be banging, fuck the haters.