On Thursday morning, the bad news that many were dreading came out, when Destiny 2 and Marathon developer Bungie was hit with massive layoffs at PlayStation maker Sony, its publisher.
The layoffs affected “a large number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some members of the Marathon team.” Additionally, it has been confirmed that some Sony employees assisting Bungie have been affected by the layoffs.
Although the layoff was, sadly, somehow expected – Bungie announced the end of the live service development of Destiny 2 last month, and it was recently reported that the developer will soon be affected by “significant” cuts – they did not hurt the studio’s staff, and represent a significant reduction of its resources at Sony.
Notably, separate from Sony CEO Hermen Hulst’s memo to his employees about the matter, Bungie itself has publicly released a letter about the news to its fans and employees, past and present. I’ve embedded the post below, and the text of the book is included below that:
It is with great sadness that we announce a reduction in capacity as we restructure Bungie.
As Bungie’s leaders, past and present, we’ve seen Destiny 2 fall short of expectations over the past few years. Following our last content update on Destiny 2, and with our future projects still on hold, unfortunately we couldn’t continue working at our previous size.
We know that this decision has a huge impact on the people affected, their families, friends, and colleagues. While these changes are necessary to better position the studio now and in the future, that does not diminish the difficulty of this time or the impact it has on those affected.
Later, we will share more about that tomorrow but today is not that day.
Today, we wish to extend our gratitude and sympathy to every member of the Bungie team that was affected and to those who remain.
We hope you will do the same.
— I’m sorry
This is the third and largest wave of layoffs Bungie has faced since being acquired by Sony in 2022, with the studio coming again in October 2023 and July 2024. During that time, 155 employees were transferred from the engineering staff to Sony.
The book specifically points to the gradual decline of Destiny 2 over the past few years, which has been confirmed as the main reason for the cuts we’ve seen. It is worth noting that recently, the former community manager of Bungie and Destiny 2 Liana Ruppert asserted that “A lot of money did not go into Destiny” because of the leadership’s “greed,” which leads to a lack of important resources for the development of the game.
He then reported that the lack of sufficient funds was so bad that the merger between Bungie and Sony was done as an “emergency purchase,” and that if the PlayStation publisher had not used the studio, it would have been “very close to closing its doors.”
We may not know directly the truth of what happened at Bungie, but one thing is clear: the last few years of the studio have been tumultuous, and sadly, its employees have suffered as a result.
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