The layoffs Bungie announced yesterday hit nearly 300 staff who worked on the developer’s Bellevue, Washington office, official records have revealed.
A Employee Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice issued by Sony to the Washington State Employment Security Department, reported by Game File, reveals 292 staff have been let go along with a proper separation date set for July 9. This number doesn’t account for Bungie staff outside Washington state. It’s unknown what number of staff remain at Bungie following the cuts, although the studio was reported to have employed 850 staff as of 2024.
It’s Bungie’s third round of layoffs in three years. In response to The Seattle Times, Bungie once had 1,000 employees in Bellevue, based on a 2023 annual financial report from the town. Between October 2023 and July 2024, Bungie laid off around 320 staff. Local press have called the cuts a “bloodbath.”
In its statement yesterday, Hermen Hulst, CEO, Studio Business Group, Sony Interactive Entertainment, spoke in regards to the layoffs typically terms, only saying a “significant” variety of employees had been affected, hitting “many of the Destiny team and a few Marathon team members.”
Hulst described the choice as “difficult” and “painful,” but “crucial to align the studio’s resources with its current priorities and long-term goals.” The news follows the recent ending of latest content for Destiny 2, and the discharge of hardcore extraction shooter Marathon, which has struggled for players. Sony has insisted it stays committed to Marathon, whose team can be said to be working on “incubation efforts for future projects.”
The WARN notice redacts individual names, but includes job titles. It reveals staff across all departments were hit, including artists and technical animators, audio leads and sound designers, engineers, producers, and systems designers, and integrated Sony support teams that manage day-to-day Bungie infrastructure.
Quite a few former Bungie staff have taken to social media to substantiate they were hit by the layoffs. Some are Bungie veterans of over a decade. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said Bungie studio head Justin Truman, who succeeded Pete Parsons last yr, had stepped down. In response to Forbes reporter Paul Tassi, former Bungie VP of Operations, Poria Torkan, has reportedly taken charge of the studio.
Social media users have also picked up on the mention of “Chief Vision Officer” within the WARN notice. Some are speculating that that is Bungie co-founder and Halo and Destiny creator Jason Jones, who maintains a low profile and infrequently speaks to the press. Jones appeared in an official Destiny 2 video released in 2021 during which he was described as Chief Vision Officer. If Jones has left Bungie — and this stays unconfirmed for now — it could represent a real end of an era for the studio behind a few of the most iconic first-person shooters ever released.
Bungie has struggled financially for a while, and reportedly was on the point of closure before Sony bought the studio back in 2022 for $3.6 billion. Sony recently reported a $765 million impairment loss because of underperformance of Bungie specifically.
Bungie’s issues with Destiny 2 reportedly began across the time of last summer’s Fringe of Fate expansion, which was said to have underperformed. The choice to tug the plug was allegedly made “earlier this yr” after it was decided to not relaunch the franchise as “Destiny Infinity.”
Forbes reported that Bungie began discussing different scenarios about “what the longer term of Destiny 2 would appear to be” after December’s Renegades, its Star Wars-themed crossover expansion, “did even worse [than Edge of Fate] and didn’t change sales or retention trajectory.”
Destiny Infinity would have been a relaunch alongside a return to the one big expansion model Destiny used to have, but the concept fell by the wayside after it was allegedly decided that the prices and risks were too high, especially within the context of support for Marathon.
Destiny 3 “was considered, as ever, but things didn’t swing that way,” and there was no behind-the-scenes hints that a 3rd Destiny game is coming, with the fee of the sport’s production cited as the important thing issue.
Destiny 2 launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 6, 2017, with a PC version following a month later. Behind the scenes, nonetheless, tension between Bungie and Activision emerged, and the 2 firms officially parted ways in January 2019, ending their 10-year publishing deal five years early.
With Destiny in its own hands, Bungie self-published the sport, however it couldn’t escape financial troubles and layoffs as Destiny 2 expansions didn’t hit the mark and the player base dwindled. Extraction shooter Marathon launched early March, with a reported budget of greater than $250 million. It too, based on analysts, has failed to satisfy sales expectations.
Photographer: Troy Harvey/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.