Terrible news coming out of Bungie today, and it’s a double whammy. Many members of staff have been let go, as well as The Final Shape being delayed from February to June 2024.
The news was first reported by Jason Schreier from Bloomberg. Jason is a very reliable source and he says
Bungie, the Sony-owned game studio behind Destiny 2, let go an undisclosed number of staffers, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
In an email to employees seen by Bloomberg, Bungie Chief Executive Officer Pete Parsons said staffers would be “hearing some news today” and that there would be a team meeting later in the day to “discuss today’s events.” The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bungie recently delayed an upcoming Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, until June from February, pushing it out of Sony Group Corp.’s current fiscal year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Bungie’s next game, Marathon, slipped to 2025.
Sony, which purchased Bungie in early 2022 for $3.6 billion, has been cutting staff across its PlayStation division this year, in part due to delays. The unit lost several key producers this year, and PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said last month he will retire in March.
Thousands of video game workers have been let go in 2023 so far as companies look to cut costs, even after a year full of hits. Last month, Epic Games cut around 900 staff.
Since this article was published many members of the Bungie team have gone to Social Media to confirm they have been let go. Community Managers (including Hippy), Q&A, HR, Legal, player support and art team members have all confirmed they have been laid off.
As well as the layoffs, Jason also confirmed The Final Shape has been delayed from February 2024 to June 2024. It was also stated Marathon was pushed to 2025, but I don’t think a release date was public for Marathon, and I certainly didn’t expect it before 2025.
The Final Shape being delayed in this manner is a little strange. It wasn’t too long ago we had the reveal event, when we had the release date of February 27th 2024 confirmed for the first time, that was just over 2 months ago.
We have seen delays before to major expansions with The Witch Queen delayed from September 2021 to February 2022. That shifted the major Destiny expansions to February rather than the traditional September releases. The Final Shape was itself a new expansion added to the roster after Beyond Light was revealed, and the original plan was Beyond Light, Witch Queen and Lightfall, with The Final Shape added later and many speculating much of the original Lightfall content was pushed into the Final Shape, with Lightfall acting as a filler expansion.
The effect of this delay to June 2024, means our final season in the Lightfall DLC is going to be 7 long months, plus that pushes back the start of the episodes narrative framework. Delays aren’t neccessarily bad, it means Bungie has had a hard look at the content and said that isn’t good enough, or it isn’t ready, therefore it needs more time.
However, the timing of this delay, together with the layoffs doesn’t look great. Many are questioning if this is a Bungie decision or a Sony decision, with Sony very likely being the prime candidate with other layoffs coming at Sony Studios recently, including UK based Media Molecule.
Sony purchasing Bungie for more than $3 billion dollars was supposed to be an investment in Bungie. Destiny 2 was the cash cow that would fund Bungie’s development of other games like Marathon and Gummybears, while they would consult at Sony Studios and held Sony deliver on their grand live service plans, which now seem to be up in the air. Bungie recently helped out with Naughty Dog’s Last of Us Multiplayer mode, saying it wasn’t ready for the public. Now Bungie itself appears to be in trouble with a delay to the final chapters in the Light vs Darkness Saga, and much of their front line community management teams let go. You would imagine a live service game needs a community team, especially now when the franchise is going through major change from one saga into the next.
All in all it’s been a very bad day for Bungie. I can wait for the expansion, but my heart goes out to the staff who have been let go. This isn’t an isolated incident at Bungie, far from it, it’s happening all over the games industry and the wider tech industry.