Bungie is laying off over 200 employees, integrating further with Sony

The decision follows hardship after “rapid expansion” and outsized “ambitions”

Bungie

Bungie CEO Pete Parsons announced studio layoffs affecting 220 people, or roughly 17 percent of Bungie’s workforce, as the Destiny 2 maker integrates more closely with Sony. Parsons said the layoffs include most of Bungie’s executive and senior staff, and all affected will receive severance pay, bonuses, and health coverage in their exit package.

The news comes after Bungie’s successful launch of Destiny 2: The Final Shape, but also a few months after Bungie laid off eight percent of its workforce and reportedly missed internal revenue projections by a wide margin.

Parsons announced two additional, structural changes for Bungie. One of those involves merging 155 Bungie roles into Sony leadership in the coming months, which Parsons said saved Bungie from having to lay off even more talent. The other involves letting Sony create a new first-party studio to lead development on one of Bungie’s seed projects.

Sony had its own round of layoffs in February 2024 and let 900 people go from the company.

Parsons shifted focus to explain how Bungie arrived at this situation, and if you’ve kept up with gaming layoffs since late 2023, the tale is a familiar one. Parsons says Bungie stretched its resources too thin by spreading its comparatively small studio across three long-term projects, before running into serious issues in 2023 when the pandemic gaming bubble burst.

“Our rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, our quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall, and the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon the time needed to ensure both projects deliver at the quality our players expect and deserve,” Parsons said in the announcement. “We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red.”

“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.”

Parsons said Bungie’s remaining staff of 850 will continue working on Destiny 2 and Marathon.