Bungie has announced the “eliminating” of another 220 roles at its studio beginning today, publishing a lengthy statement from CEO, Pete Parsons, explaining the decision to axe around 17% of the company’s total workforce in yet another massive blow to an already-careening space in the industry.
“This morning, I’m sharing with all of you some of the most difficult changes we’ve ever had to make as a studio,” begins the message. “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.
“That means beginning today, 220 of our roles will be eliminated, representing roughly 17% of our studio’s workforce.
“These actions will affect every level of the company, including most of our executive and senior leader roles.”
Parsons blames a number of factors for the eventual decision to let go of this significant number of its hardworking and talented developers, including a rapid expansion in 2023 that met with downturns in the industry and economic slowdown, as well as a “quality miss” with Destiny 2: Lightfall, saying the studio (well, the part of it in charge of making these decisions) was “overly ambitious” and ran itself into the red.
This morning, we shared an important update with the Bungie team on the difficult decision to eliminate 220 roles at Bungie.
You can read the full statement below.https://t.co/FVkWNSWDtZ
— Bungie (@Bungie) July 31, 2024
In the statement, Parsons also reveals that the cuts would have been worse if not for working with parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment to integrate a further 155 roles into SIE in the coming months. In addition, it’s spinning out one of its early-development projects into a brand-new team at PlayStation Studios.
“First, 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,” the CEO writes.
“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.”
“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,” Parsons says as 220 developers are shown the door.
