To say it’s been a tough year for game developers would be an understatement. Across the industry we’ve seen an incredibly large re-structuring which has left greater than 20,000 developers of varying disciplines looking for work since the beginning of 2023. This has been true for publishers and studios big and small, from Embracer Group and Tencent to PlayStation, Xbox, Amazon, and many more.
Perhaps one of the most visible to gamers has been Bungie. Acquired in 2022 by PlayStation, Bungie laid off approximately 100 of their ~1,200 employees last year after reporting a 45% drop in revenue. Less than a year later, and after a very successful launch of Destiny 2’s Final Shape expansion, Bungie is how parting with a significant portion of their remaining staff.
Bungie CEO, Pete Parsons, posted the following on Bungie.net explaining the latest round of layoffs and re-structuring. To summarize:
- 220 roles across the company are being eliminated, equating to 17% of the workforce at the time.
- Additionally, another 155 roles are being integrated to SIE directly (another 12% of the workforce).
Doing the simple match, this means that since last year, over a third of Bungie is no longer part of the studio. And with this latest round of cuts, long-term Bungie staples and Destiny community icons such as Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy have also parted ways with Bungie (specific details are unavailable).
Reporter Stephen Totilo provided further details courtesy of Game File. In particular:
- The layoffs were planned prior to Final Shape launching.
- Internal employees at Bungie feel that Bungie over-promised to PlayStation and that PlayStation paid too much for the acquisition.
- Though not selling to PlayStation could have been potentially worse in the long-term.
While early reports spoke of the cancellation of “Destiny 3,” it has since been confirmed by Jason Schreier and others that the game was never actually in development. Instead, it seems Bungie is figuring out how to focus on future Destiny 2 content along with launching Marathon solely.
It’s hard to believe that a studio responsible for one of the most popular games in the industry could have been in such bad shape financially. And as you might expect, with the dam now breaking, there are many reports about upper-level mis-management, including from ex-employees themselves.
Posted by @thesambartley, she noted that CEO Pete Parsons had invited her to see his new cars just two days prior to being laid off. And in further detail, other Twitter/X users are detailing the money Parsons has spent on vehicles over the last 18 months during the two rounds of layoffs which totals more than $2.4 million alone.
Former Bungie Community Manager, Liana Ruppert, called for Parsons to step down and alluded to there being much more information about Parsons’ poor leadership that can’t be shared publicly.
Regardless of the reasons, it’s clear that something has to give in the gaming industry. We have commented on this many times before and will continue to. With the industry bringing in so much revenue, and there being so much investment globally, executive leadership has to do a better job of taking care of the core teams. Because without them, none of what we love in gaming would exist.