Bungie has today announced a "new path" for its future in game development, as the team behind Halo and Destiny "deepens" its relationship with owner Sony. This new path unfortunately includes some layoffs, although the team's further integration with the PlayStation maker appears to have dampened the impact of these job losses.
The developer has laid off 220 people today; roughly 17% of its overall workforce. However, Sony Interactive Entertainment has picked up 155 of those roles - with the end loss being around 5% of Bungie staff once those new Sony roles are factored in.
Here's an update from the team on this round of layoffs and why it's happening:
"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.
We are deepening our integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment, working to integrate 155 of our roles, roughly 12%, into SIE over the next few quarters. SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify roles for as many of our people as possible, enabling us together to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force."
What's also interesting here is that, although Destiny content, and Marathon, will still come to Xbox consoles, Bungie is also forming a new studio within PlayStation to work on "an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe". There's no more detail on the project than that right now, but it sounds like this will end up being a PlayStation console exclusive when it launches.
"Second, we are working with PlayStation Studios leadership to spin out one of our incubation projects – an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe – to form a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue its promising development."
These are interesting moves from Bungie, and we're curious to see where the studio goes in the coming years under Sony ownership. We're looking forward to seeing more on Marathon especially, because we know that one will release on Xbox!
What do you think of all this? Tell us your opinions on the move down below.
[source bungie.net]
Comments 18
Bungie no longer exists, Microsoft abandoned them, Activision hurt them and Sony has finished them off.
Sad for those losing their job. At least Sony hired some back, better than nothing I guess.
Won’t be long before they follow MS in raising their sub price.
@Pabpictu In what way did Microsoft abandon them? Bungie wanted to be free of Microsoft and made an agreement to leave.
Then they were so desperate to no be independent they went to Activision the Sony.
It will be interesting to see how this develops over time. I don't think xbox owners have to worry too much about games being taken away as I am assuming concord is about to show them just how much these games need as many players as possible. But it will be interesting to see how much sony will dictate what bungie does when bungie seemed to be influential in what games sony released or canceled.
@BacklogBrad concord is gonna fail cause it’s a good game when it needs to be great to succeed in this market. It has nothing to do with not being on xbox
Really sad to see after the final shape did very well. It is part of the over investment into live service games.
Removed - unconstructive
The full article also mentions spread to thinly amongst projects.
Spread to thinly amongst projects is the key word for me.
A lot of studios do this and then end producing nothing or games of little value.
I do worry there is to much of this spread thinly going on and is why games are taking longer in development.
A Sony studio used to be good at making one game per studio, an amazing game and get it finished and done. Maybe not so much nowadays.
I always say this about some Xbox Studios one studio with so many projects on the go simultaneously.
“ Expanding on how Bungie ended up in this situation, Parsons said the studio became stretched too thinly across multiple incubation projects”
They underdelivered for too long with 1200+ staff. That's a lot of mouths to feed. Still going to be 850+ after both sets of lay-off and restructuring. That's still a giant studio.
They said they wanted to "ship games in three enduring, global franchises" so there was clearly other games being developed in the background, aside from Destiny and Marathon.
@Pabpictu Nope, they wanted to be free and MS let them and found out the hard way. Chasing money has only gotten them in the *****
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer dev 😂
Who didn't see this coming. Bungie will slowly become Playstation game studios and Activision will slowly become Xbox game studios.
I seem to recall it being reported that there was some sort of conflict between Sony and Bungie about being further integration and the (then) next Destiny expansion was going to decide Bungie's fate.
If that was true then I guess the expansion did offer the demanded results by the Sony execs, which is to be expected I'm sure it wasn't a reasonable target anyway.
I'm shocked they are still trying to push out a Destiny 3. If it flops, it could spell the end completely.
A lot of players, including myself, stuck around for the final chapter of the story, but are done with it now. The game has turned into a chore and the never ending recycled content made it stale and tedious. I'm sad to see what started as an awesome game fall so far due to greed.
Wonder if the Microsoft/Xbox haters will now also chastise Sony over these layoffs? Doubt it.
@GuyinPA75 of course they will.
Nobody wants lay offs. But at least Some have found a new role in the new studio for now. Small blessings. It’s a pity the other 200 couldn’t have been kept as let’s face it the salaries are a drop in the ocean.
@Savage_Joe Given how close these studios are to each... A ton of these ex-Bungie devs are probably already ex-343i devs and vice versa... So, it probably not going to really help 343i.
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