Jason Schreier reporting that Bungie is laying off staff today as part of cuts across Sony. The Final Shape has reportedly been delayed to June 2024 and Marathon to 2025.
Jason is very accurate with his reporting and has sources across the industry. We’ll likely hear something official soon.
This seems wild. Wonder if they’re extending this season and next season or just next season. Since I highly doubt we’ll get a filler season after next season since next season leads into TFS.
My clan thinks this is due to massive mismanagement on Bungies part, which may be true to a degree. But with all the lay offs in the industry the last few years I assume the need by the executive suite to make their bonuses via lay offs is part of it too. Sure Lightfall was a wreck, but the seasons this year have all been very good from a story standpoint. Some of the engagement has been iffy for sure (Deep probably being the season with the most issues).
It sounds to me like this is a general Sony/PlayStation financial issue that unfortunately affects Bungie as they were bought by Sony
Probably. But Bungie set aside a billion to retain staff. And then a year later from that these lay offs hit. But who knows.
Agree - they were 100% heading this way, but being part of Sony took this decision out of their hands and escalated it, I would wager.
Ouch. Looks like I was wrong.
sony gave bungie 1.2b for retention. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/84365/sony-offers-bungie-employees-1-2-billion-retention-incentive-plan/index.html
this is on executives imho.
If it is Sony’s fault. I really wonder why they couldn’t just wait 6 months, ya know, seeing as Bungie does have a pretty important thing coming up in a few months. I get it probably doesn’t work that way, but you’d think they’d be like, "Okay, we need to get rid of some of your staff, but we’ll let you finish off what you’re doing.
Yup it’s come out that we both were, Destiny 2 underperformed in sales and that’s the source of the layoffs…