Bungie lays off 220 people, will set up spin-off studio within Son – WGB

Bungie, the developers of Halo and Destiny, has announced that 220 people, roughly 17% of its workforce, is being laid off.

In an open letter, Pete Parsons of Bungie made the announcement, blaming rising costs of development and ongoing economic factors.

“Due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions,” said Parsons. “That means beginning today, 220 of our roles will be eliminated, representing roughly 17% of our studio’s workforce.  ”

Parsons goes on to discuss two other major changes. The first is that 155 roles at Bungie will be “integrated” into Sony. Parsons comments that these people would ” otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force.”

Bungie is also working with Sony to set up a new studio built around one of their current projects in the incubation stage. This new game is apparently set within a “brand-new science-fantasy universe.”

Parsons goes on by attempting to justify how Bungie wound up in this position.

“For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises,” writes Parsons. “To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly.  It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon.  “

According to Parsons, the company’s “rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown.” He mentions the “quality miss” of Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansions along with the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon more time to cook.

“We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red,” Parson’s said.

Parsons claim Bungie and Sony did everything possible to avoid this outcome. Back in October of 2023 Bungie laid of 100 of its staff.

“Bungie will continue to make great games. We still have over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon, and we will continue to build amazing experiences that exceed our players’ expectations,” Parsons stated.

Bungie has seemingly been in trouble for quite some time now, but the issues plaguing the company appear to have worsened since Sony acquired it. In December of 2023, IGN published an article describing a Bungie suffering from a “soul-crushing” atmosphere and there were concerns that Sony would completely take over the company.