Bungie, the developer of Destiny, has announced a major round of layoffs in yet another example of a large studio in the industry cutting hundreds of jobs. The company also showcased a brand-new game, but it’s no longer being developed internally and is shifting to an internal studio at PlayStation.
In an official company blog post, Bungie exec Pete Parsons confirmed the studio would be cutting approximately 17% of its workforce or about 220 people. Late last year, Bungie had a round of layoffs that affected over 100 people.
Rising Costs
“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,” Parsons said.
Senior Execs Affected
What’s more, Parsons explained that these layoffs affect “every level” of Bungie, including “most” of Bungie’s executive or senior leader positions are impacted. Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, two senior Bungie executives, were included in the recent round of layoffs. The duo were confirmed to be working on Payback, a new game set in the Destiny universe.
Smith was executive director at Bungie and became a notable public-facing representative for the studio, having guided Destiny 2‘s narrative back to a place that excited fans and more clearly set up a long-term story for the sci-fi shooter. Noseworthy, meanwhile, was vice president of the Destiny universe and responsible for the overall strategy of Destiny as an intellectual property and a business.
Fortunately, everyone that is affected by the cuts is receiving a “generous” package that includes severance pay, a bonus, and health coverage for a period of time.
Deeper Integration with Sony Online Entertainment
As part of the shift, Bungie is “deepening” integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment, its parent company. Parsons explained that about 12% of Bungie’s remaining workforce will move into internal positions at SIE within the coming months.
PlayStation is working with Bungie to “spin out” of its “incubation projects” to form a new studio within PlayStation to continue work on a new title set in a brand-new “science-fantasy” universe. This is not Destiny 3 or Payback, however.
“This will be a time of tremendous change for our studio,” Parsons said.
Too Much Ambition
Parsons went on to explain that the original plan was to have several “incubation” projects going on simultaneously, each of which had senior dev leaders working on them. Unfortunately, this did not pan out as expected.
“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,” Parsons said.
Parsons continued by saying that Bungie’s plan to do this came at a time of “broad economic slowdown” along with a “sharp downturn” in the industry of games overall, with Destiny 2: Lightfall failing to reach the company’s standards of quality.
“We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red,” he said. “After this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change our course and speed, and we did everything we could to avoid today’s outcome. Even with exhaustive efforts undertaken across our leadership and product teams to resolve our financial challenges, these steps were simply not enough.”
Following internal shifts and layoffs, Bungie will have just over 850 employees working on Destiny and Marathon, said Parsons.
These changes come just after the release of Destiny 2‘s The Final Shape expansion, which was received positively by fans.