Bungie has announced that it will be eliminating 220 roles within its company as it becomes the latest game studio to announce layoffs. The cutbacks were announced via social media on July 31, with a more detailed statement posted on their official website.
In the statement, entitled “The New Path for Bungie,” the Pete Parsons, the CEO of Bungie, explained that due to rising costs and industry shifts, the developer would be eliminating 220 jobs. The layoffs represent 17% of the studio’s workforce.
Image Credit: Bungie
This is also the second time in 12 months Bungie has faced layoffs. In October, 2023, the company announced another round of layoffs, as reported by Bloomberg.
However, perhaps bucking an industry trend, Parsons asserted that the layoffs would affect “most of our executive and senior leader roles.” Video game companies have often faced criticism for laying of designers and gamemakers, while leaving c-suite positions intact.
The layoffs come as Bungie celebrates the success of its critically acclaimed Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape. However, the work put into that success is seemingly partly to blame for the current situation:
“…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.”
Parson’s statement was filled with remorse, although that will be little comfort for those whose jobs have been lost. They’re also in stark contrast to his October 2023 comments following layoffs, which were widely criticized as being tone-deaf. But this statement ended on a hopeful note:
“Bungie will continue to make great games. We still have over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon, and we will continue to build amazing experiences that exceed our players’ expectations.”
“There will be a time to talk about our goals and projects, but today is not that day. Today, our focus is on supporting our people.”
Bungie, a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment, rose to prominence with its legendary Halo: Combat Evolved shooter, which saw the company acquired by Microsoft. The game has been a flagship title for the Xbox throughout the years. In 2014 it released Destiny, a live-service looter shooter. This was followed by the ongoing title Destiny 2, in 2017.
Marathon, a reboot of their 1994 Apple Macintosh shooter, is slated for release sometime in the future.
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