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 like a very heavy-handed decision, but at the same time, no one externally really understands what is happening at bungie. There are periods of excellent content with good balance, and there are ones with absolutely horrible everything else, and poor communication as the cherry on top.
I feel really bad for everyone affected, and am not sure how this will reflect on the upcoming months. The next season, without any doubt, is already finalized, and I don’t know if it’ll last almost 8 months
Executives should be taking a paycut for their failures, not laying off their low level staff.
Always true, rarely if ever what happens
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…
Obligatiory recommendedation: Jason co-hosts a gaming news podcast called Triple Click, alongside Maddy Myers, Deputy Games Editor at Polygon, and Kirk Hamilton, formerly of Kotaku and now host of Strong Songs. They’re excellent at their work.
My thoughts are with those finding out they need to find new jobs, their whole lives just got upended.
With Destiny, we have had artificially extended seasons before, during COVID if I remember right. Seeing as we have stuff to do in game still we should be ok. Maybe they can mix things up a bit and rotate the exotic missions more often or allow a playlist of those.
Best thing to say when they let you go?
Forever is a long time to miss me!
They had open roles as recently as last week on LinkedIn. Looking at the careers page, only a handful are left.
Bungie has some of the worst executives I’ve witnessed in a long while. They bragged on under delivering and now it’s come back to haunt them.
Spoiler alert: most executives are bad at their jobs.
