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Destiny 2. (Bungie Image)
Bellevue, Wash.-based game developer Bungie announced Wednesday that it is laying off approximately 17% of its workforce, or 220 roles.
“Due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions, it has become clear that we need to make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon,” CEO Pete Parsons wrote in a post on the official Bungie website.
The layoffs affect “every level” of the company, and include “most of our executive and senior leader roles,” as per Parsons’ post.
In addition, Bungie will integrate approximately 155 (12%) of its current roles into its parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment, and will cease internal development on one of its next unannounced projects.
That project, an action game set in “a brand-new science-fantasy universe,” may be the new IP that Bungie was teasing as recently as August of last year. Notably, it hasn’t been canceled, but will instead be spun out to a new developer in the PlayStation Studios network.
Parsons writes that the reorganization is the result of a combination of factors, such as the “quality miss” of last year’s unpopular Destiny 2 expansion Lightfall, the internal effort of maintaining development on both D2 and the upcoming PVP shooter Marathon, and the general economic slowdown of 2023.
“We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red,” Parsons wrote.
While Destiny 2’s most recent expansion, June’s The Final Shape, was met with rave reviews, it didn’t bring in enough revenue to prevent the current reorganization. Bungie will now work exclusively on Destiny and the upcoming revival of Marathon.
Founded in 1991, Bungie is currently best known for its massively-multiplayer online shooter Destiny 2, which wrapped up its current main story arc in June. Bungie was also the original developer on the Halo series, which launched alongside the Xbox console in 2001 and rapidly became a tentpole franchise for Microsoft’s console division. Bungie was purchased by Microsoft in 2000, went independent again in 2007, and was subsequently purchased by SIE in 2022.
This is Bungie’s second major reorganization in nine months, following the dismissal of 100 employees in October. At the time of the previous layoffs, Bungie employed more than 1,400 people; as of Parsons’ Wednesday-morning announcement, it’s down to around 850.
Layoffs and shutdowns have been an endemic problem in the video game industry for the last 18 months, with well over 10,000 employees dismissed from companies around the world since January.
Analysts have blamed the overall instability on factors that include a dramatic slowdown in available VC investment; a delayed market correction following the pandemic-era gaming boom of 2020-2021; a consistently flooded release schedule, which has resulted in more available video games than there are people interested in playing them; and the long-term impacts of the industry’s increasing focus on “games as a service.”
This morning, we shared an important update with the Bungie team on the difficult decision to eliminate 220 roles at Bungie. You can read the full statement below.https://t.co/FVkWNSWDtZ— Bungie (@Bungie) July 31, 2024
