“Destiny 2” developer Bungie announced plans to lay off 220 employees, consolidate the remaining 155 jobs into Sony Interactive Entertainment, and transfer the work of one of its “incubation programs” to the newly established PlayStation Studio.
Bungie CEO Pete Parsons elaborated on the shift in a new blog post, calling it “the most difficult change we’ve ever had to make as a studio.” He continued: “Due to rising development costs, industry transformation, and enduring economic conditions, it became clear that we needed to make significant changes to our cost structure and focus our development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon.”
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The 220 employees being laid off represent “approximately 17%” of the studio’s workforce, which Parsons said will include “executive and senior leadership roles.” “Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, who have all made important and valuable contributions to Bungie,” he added. “Our goal is to treat Bungie with the utmost care and respect. Come support them.
Beyond that, Bungie will be more deeply integrated into parent company Sony, with the studio currently “working to integrate 155 [its] Over the next few quarters, approximately 12% of the characters will enter SIE,” which Parsons said will allow Bungie to “save a significant amount of talent that would otherwise be affected by the reduction in troops.”
Finally, Bungie is set to “spun off” development of one of its “incubation projects,” an untitled action game set in a new sci-fi universe, to the newly formed PlayStation Studio, per Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier (Jason Schreier) stated that 75 ex-Bungie will be heading to this new studio.
Overall, Bungie’s headcount will be reduced from 1,300 to 850 people as a result of these changes. “For more than five years, our goal has been to publish games in three enduring global franchises,” Parsons wrote. “To achieve this goal, we have established multiple incubation programs, each led by Senior development leaders from our existing teams serve as seeds, which also forces our studio’s support structure to expand beyond what we can realistically support, as well as giving Final Form and Marathon the time they need to ensure this. Both projects were delivered on time. We were overly ambitious and subsequently exceeded our financial safety margin and we started losing money. “After this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change our course and pace, and we did everything we could. Even with the best efforts of our leadership and product teams to address our financial challenges, these steps are simply not enough.
