Destiny developer Bungie cutting 220 jobs after exceeding 'financial safety margins'

Destiny developer Bungie is laying off 220 worker due to "rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic condition."

The studio, which was acquired by PlayStation maker Sony for $3.6 billion in 2022, said the redundancies will result in a 17 percent workforce reduction. It said people at "every level of the company" will be impacted, including those in senior and executive roles.

"Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, all of which have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie. Our goal is to support them with the utmost care and respect. For everyone affected by this job reduction, we will be offering a generous exit package, including severance, bonus and health coverage," said Bungie CEO, Pete Parsons, in a statement.

"I realize all of this is hard news, especially following the success we have seen with The Final Shape. But as we've navigated the broader economic realities over the last year, and after exhausting all other mitigation options, this has become a necessary decision to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials."

Other changes will result in Bungie "deepening" its integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) by moving 115 workers over to 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," Parsons continued.

It's also working with PlayStation to establish a new studio to spin out one of its incubation projects, which it describes as an action game set in a brand-new sci-fi universe.

"This will be a time of tremendous change for our studio. Let's unpack how we ended up in this position; it’s important to understand how we got here. For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises. To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams," said Parsons.

"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. 

"Additionally, in 2023, 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. We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red."

According to Parsons, Bungie knew it had to alter its "course and speed" once that new trajectory became clear. He claims the studio worked exhaustively to avoid laying off workers, but ultimately failed to resolve its financial challenges.

"As a result, today we must say goodbye to incredible talent, colleagues, and friends," he continued. "This will be a challenging time at Bungie, and we’ll need to help our team navigate these changes in the weeks and months ahead.

"This will be a hard week, and we know that our team will need time to process, to ask questions, and to absorb this news. Today, and over the next several weeks, we will host team meetings and town halls, team breakout sessions, and private, individual sessions to ensure we are keeping our communication open and transparent."

Bungie and its remaining 850 team members will continue developing Destiny and Marathon. The news comes after PlayStation axed over 900 jobs in March, adding to a wave of redundancies that has decimated the industry.