Destiny developer Bungie lays off 220 staff, roughly 17 percent of workforce

Destiny developer Bungie has laid off another 220 staff, representing roughly 17 percent of the studio's workforce.

In October last year, the studio laid off 100 staff from its then 1200-strong workforce. That means Bungie has laid off around a quarter of its workforce in the past nine months.

The news was shared today in a blog post from Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, describing the decision as "some of the most difficult changes we've ever had to make as a studio".

"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," said Parsons.

"These actions will affect every level of the company, including most of our executive and senior leader 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.

"I realise 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."

Parsons added Bungie is committing to two major changes.

The first is deeper integration with Sony to "integrate 155 of our roles, roughly 12 percent, into SIE over the next few quarters". Sony bought Bungie in February 2022 for $3.6bn.

Secondly, Bungie will move one of its early-development projects - an "action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe" - to PlayStation Studios to form a new studio.

Collectively, between moving staff and layoffs, Bungie is down-sizing considerably, though Parsons explicitly stated the studio has "over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon".

For the past five years, explained Parsons, Bungie has strived to ship games across "three enduring, global franchises" but has since realised this "stretched our talent too thin, too quickly". This is in addition to a "broad economic slowdown", a "sharp downturn" in the games industry, and a "quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall".

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

"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."

Bungie global community lead Dylan Gafner described the decision as "inexcusable" in a post on X. "Industry leading talent being lost, yet again," he wrote. "Accountability falling upon the workers who have pushed the needle to deliver for our community time and time again."

These new layoffs at Bungie are just the latest across the industry. In February, Sony itself laid off 900 PlayStation employees and closed London Studio entirely.

Just last week, meanwhile, Humble Games laid off a number of employees as part of a restructuring, which has since had a knock-on effect to other studios such as Coral Island developer Stairway Games.

Back in May, Eurogamer reported over 10,000 people had been laid off from the games industry this year alone. That tally is now at an estimated 11,200.

In December, employees at Bungie were reportedly anxious about the studio's future, describing the mood as "soul-crushing".