One month after a major round of layoffs impacted roughly 100 Bungie employees of 1,200, those remaining at the Destiny developer say the cuts, as well as other cost-cutting measures, came alongside an apparent scramble by studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover.
    • MacedWindow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      101·
      1 year ago

      I had a Destiny poster on my wall back when all we knew was the name of the game and a bit of promotional art. We named our cat Bungie. So yeah, I’m pretty sad about the current state of things.

    • nul9o9@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      I was listening to some Halo 3/ODST OST’s, it was very bittersweet thinking about what we had.

  • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    20·
    1 year ago

    was with this threat looming that Bungie leadership - not Sony, according to Parsons - made the choice to lay off roughly 100 employees last month.

    But the cost-cutting at Bungie isn’t limited to just personnel. Multiple current employees confirmed to IGN that the company has implemented numerous other cost-cutting measures recently, including a studio-wide hiring freeze, reduced travel budgets, elimination of holiday bonuses, keeping its annual Bungie Day virtual, delaying its weeklong company “Pentathalon” event to next December, and reducing numerous morale events such as cooking and knitting classes from monthly to quarterly. Bungie is also pausing or fully ending benefits like annual employee compensation adjustments to meet market rates, its new hire lunch program, employee donation matching, its peer recognition program, and gift cards for employees birthdays.

  • harry_balzac@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    1 year ago

    So…Bungies leadership is worried that Sony will completely take over, so they’re making it into a dumpster fire?

    That’ll only mean that Sony will take over and fire the Bungie executives making these decisions, giving them generous severance packages on top of all the bonuses they’ll give themselves for cutting costs…wait, I think I figured it out.

    • Quokka@quokk.auEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      If Bungie falls short of certain financial thresholds by too great an amount, Sony is allowed to dissolve the existing board and take full control of the company.

      Also the article mentions the board being split 50/50 between Sony and Bungee, with 1 tie breaker. So I don’t think they’re trying to hand it over to Sony when they could’ve just done that at any stage without a convoluted scheme.

  • sarcasticsunrise@lemm.eeEnglish
    112·
    1 year ago

    I’m sure they had a reason to do it, but why the hell did they leave Microsoft again??? Working under Sony sounds miserable

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Working for Microsoft doesn’t seem to be all sunshine and rainbows either, according to some firsthand accounts I’ve heard.

    • OscarRobin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      None of the things happening at Bungie are related to Sony at all, as the article states

      • GoodEye8@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, Sony gave Bungie a pretty sick deal. Bungie gets financial backing from Sony and if Bungie doesn’t drive itself into the ground they keep their autonomy, and I guess the main benefit Sony got is/was live service expertise from Bungie (which is what Sony was focusing on when they acquired Bungie). The fact that Sony might need to step in is all on Bungie and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been keeping up with Bungie. The short gist is that the entire company is horribly mismanaged and that’s why they had to lay off and are likely to get taken over by Sony.

        And if I’m being honest, I think Sony takeover might be the best thing for Bungie (assuming it doesn’t get entirely dissolved). Get rid of the shit management and then, once you’ve put some reasonable people at the helm, let them do their own thing again.

  • echo64@lemmy.worldEnglish
    112·
    1 year ago

    Tbh, sony needs to take over. Sony seem to do okay with their stuff, and Bungie leadership seems to be totally at fault.

    They must have the most wild buyout contract for Sony to not be able to just swoop in and fix this nonsense.

    • Shadywack@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Looks like some c-level dweeb or scab sympathizer downvoted your comment. I couldn’t agree more with your assessment. Bungie leadership is pretty much miserable assholes these days. It sucks for the developers who do the actual work and are trying to tell leadership what will actually fix the company. They don’t deserve any of the frustrations from any of the player base, but the executives can fuck themselves with splintered balsa wood for all I care.