Bungie, the Sony subsidiary and developer of Destiny 2, has laid off 220 employees, or 17% of its workforce.



On July 31, 2024 local time, Bungie , the game studio known as the developer of Destiny 2, announced that it would lay off 220 employees.

The New Path for Bungie | Bungie.net
https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/newpath



Bungie CEO Locked His Account After Announcing More Layoffs
https://kotaku.com/bungie-ceo-layoffs-locked-account-destiny-pete-parsons-1851610118



Bungie Lays Off Over 200 Employees, Announces Plans For Deeper Integration With Sony - Game Informer
https://www.gameinformer.com/2024/07/31/bungie-lays-off-over-200-employees-announces-plans-for-deeper-integration-with-sony

Bungie is a game studio founded in Chicago, USA in 1991 by Alexander Seropian and Jason Jones. It was acquired by Microsoft in 2000 and was responsible for the development of the popular Xbox series Halo, but became independent from Microsoft in 2007. It then parted ways with the Halo series and released its own original game series, Destiny. In 2022, it was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), which develops and operates the PlayStation brand.

Sony acquires Bungie, developer of Destiny 2, for over 400 billion yen - GIGAZINE



On July 31, 2024, Bungie updated its company blog and announced that due to rising development costs, industry changes, and prolonged economic conditions, it would be laying off 220 employees, or about 17% of its workforce, in order to significantly change its cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on the Destiny series and Marathon .

The cuts will affect all levels of the company, including executive and senior leadership roles, CEO Pete Parsons said, and employees who are being let go will be offered generous severance packages that include severance pay, bonuses and health benefits.

While emphasizing the success of Destiny 2's latest update, ' Final Form, ' Bungie explained the layoffs by saying, 'However, after navigating broader economic realities over the past year and exhausting all other mitigating measures, we have determined that this is a necessary decision to reduce staff numbers in order to refocus our studio and business on more realistic goals and a viable financial position.'




In addition, Bungie is working to further integrate with its parent company, SIE, and is integrating 155 roles, or about 12% of Bungie, into SIE over the next few quarters. Parsons explained, 'SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify suitable roles for as many employees as possible, which has allowed us to jointly secure many talented people who would have been affected by the reductions in workforce.'

Additionally, the company has announced that it will be working with PlayStation Studios to spin out 'an action game set in an all-new science fantasy universe' as one of its incubation projects, and will establish a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue development of the promising title.

After being acquired by SIE, Bungie also cut about 100 jobs in November 2023.

Bungie, a Sony-affiliated game studio, lays off 100 people due to a decline in users of Destiny 2 - GIGAZINE



Since Bungie announced its massive layoffs, fans of the company and people working in the games industry have been vocal in their criticism, saying things like, ' Will executives take responsibility for this or will they still just 'withhold bonuses' and 'solve it internally'? Lack of leadership has ruined one of the greatest game developers of all time. Pete, retire, ' ' Pete Parsons needs to step down, ' and ' It looks like the $1 billion Sony spent on 'talent' is being put to good use .'

Unable to withstand these criticisms, Parsons' X account was temporarily made private and inaccessible. However, as of the time of writing, the account is public, possibly due to the impact of reports that Parsons' X account was private.







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in Game, Posted by logu_ii