Sony Interactive Entertainment / PlayStation has announced a decision to lay off a significant number of Bungie staff, including “most of” the Destiny team, some Marathon team members, and some employees of the wider SIE team that functioned to support Bungie’s operations. This comes just four years after Sony spent around USD $3.6 billion acquiring the studio, and just a few weeks after the announcement that live service support for Destiny 2 has concluded.
This has, naturally, devastated the communities that continue to rally around Bungie and Destiny, and exists as yet another high-profile mass layoff in what has been a particularly brutal few years in the video game industry. It’s also entirely emblematic of the woes facing PlayStation, which had spend some time and money on chasing live-service aspirations that have not at all paid off, resulting in game cancellations and studio closures across its portfolio.
An internal email shared publicly by SIE, from Studio Business Group CEO, Hermen Hulst, claims that the company worked with Bungie leadership to explore, “multiple alternatives before concluding that a reduction was necessary to align the studio’s resources with its current priorities and long-term goals.” Those long-term goals include future projects which are, seemingly, still in the “incubation” stage – something that maybe raises questions around how effectively Bungie’s resources were being managed.
Per Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Bungie’s recently-appointed studio head, Justin Truman, is also stepping down alongside the news of these layoffs.
Bungie has also issued a statement regarding the layoffs, which reads:
With great sadness, we are announcing a reduction in force as we reorganize Bungie.
As the leaders of Bungie, past and present, we recognize Destiny 2 fell short of expectations these past several years. Following our final content update to Destiny 2, and with our future projects still in early incubation, we unfortunately could not continue operating at our previous size.
We know this decision has a profound impact on the people affected, their families, friends, and teammates. While these changes are necessary to best position the studio now and for the future, that does not lessen the difficulty of this moment or the impact it has on those affected.
Later, we will share more about that future with you all but today is not that day.
Today, we wish to extend our gratitude and compassion to every member of the Bungie team who has been impacted and to those who remain.
We hope you will do the same.
– Bungie
We sincerely hope all those affected by this, and all ongoing layoffs across the industry, receive the support they need and find themselves in a better situation.