Bungie recently announced that it’s laying off 220 people, in addition to another 155 being shifted over to PlayStation, and another portion of the workforce being spun off into a separate, new studio. It’s a deep, significant round of cuts for a studio that was already dealing with another round of widespread layoffs last October that saw roughly 100 roles being cut. In a post announcing the newest round of layoffs, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons attributed the studio’s struggles to its steep ambitions, and journalist Stephen Totilo’s newsletter Game File has shed further light on that, citing multiple anonymous sources.
Reportedly, chiefly responsible for Bungie’s troubles is the fact that its leadership may have oversold the studio’s financial prospects in particular. “I think Sony overpaid for Bungie,” one source said. “I think Bungie sold things they were just not able to deliver.”
It’s claimed that Bungie repeatedly missed internal fiscal targets set by Sony – something that previous reports have claimed as well – and that the studio had been consistently losing money since the launch of Destiny 2: Lightfall in 2023. October’s aforementioned job cuts were reportedly made in an attempt to show Sony execs that the studio was taking serious steps to correct its financial situation, but the report claims it was understood even by Bungie leadership that the cuts were insufficient.
As such, the most recent round of layoffs had been something the studio’s leadership had been planning on since the early months of 2024, the report claims. Allegedly, even if Destiny 2: The Final Shape had been a massive commercial success, it would not have been enough to avert the need for mass layoffs for the studio.
Reports claimed last year that if Destiny 2: The Final Shape underperformed, it would likely lead to further layoffs at Bungie. Incidentally, Totilo also reports that The Final Shape sold worse than last year’s Lightfall at launch- read more on that through here.
The general sentiment from former and current employees seems to be that Bungie’s leadership has been responsible for the studio’s mismanagement, and that not selling to Sony wouldn’t have been a much better alternative for it either.
“The alternate history is insolvency,” one source said.
Bungie has said that it is expecting “no disruption to all our previously communicated content plans” for Destiny. Read more on that through here.
