Bungie Lays Off 17% of Staff, 12% Join Sony, and Projects to Be Taken Over by New Sony Studio

Substandard leadership influencing employees to bear the brunt is a recurring theme.

At MMOBomb, we’ve been keeping tabs on this narrative since Sony’s acquisition of Bungie became public. This creator of Destiny 2 enjoyed initial independence under Sony, however, issues started cropping up prior to the shooter‘s The Final Shape expansion release. It seemed like Sony was keeping a keen eye on the finances and prepared to intervene whenever necessary. December layoffs were just the start of the company’s cost-cutting measures to ward off a total Sony takeover.

Despite The Final Shape faring quite well, it was insufficient to fend off massive changes. Accelerated expansion and subpar leadership (the latter being my personal viewpoint) have resulted in Bungie dismissal of 220 employees, equating to 17% of their total workforce, including senior and executive staff members. Another 12% of the staff, representing 155 roles, will be merged with Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) over the subsequent few quarters, hence saving a number of jobs.

Laid-off employees were provided severance packages, bonuses, and healthcare benefits while they search for new employment opportunities.

On the project front, anything outside of Destiny or Marathon is being terminated. However, one undisclosed action game in a sci-fi universe could potentially be handed over to a newly-created Sony studio for completion. The new studio is anticipated to comprise about 75 team members.

CEO Pete Parsons provides his perspective on how the company found itself in such a predicament in the post, attributing the difficulties to swift expansion into multiple products without an adequate support structure. “We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red,” Parsons stated.

Unfortunately, these types of circumstances usually result from top-level leadership decisions and the direction they choose, an issue which was already causing internal worry when The Final Shape’s delay was revealed.