Destiny 2 developer Bungie to lay off 220 staff, integrate more deeply with Sony, and "spin out" one game's development to a new PlayStation studio

UPDATE (01/08/24, 08:33 AM BST): Jason Schreier has now tweeted that, rather than the 75 initially specified, he's been told that "closer to 40 people are moving from Bungie's incubation team to the new Sony studio".

Destiny 2 developer Bungie has announced plans to lay off 220 staff, integrate 155 of its remaining job roles into Sony Interactive entertainment, and pass work on one of its "incubation projects" to a freshly formed PlayStation Studio.

This shift is laid out in a new blog post penned by Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, who called it "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," he continued, "it has become clear that we need to make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon."

The 220 staff being laid off amount to "roughly 17%" of the studio's workforce, with Parsons stating that they'll include "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," he added, "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."

In addition to this, Bungie will be integrated more deeply into parent company Sony, with the studio currently "working to integrate 155 of [its] roles, roughly 12%, into SIE over the next few quarters", which Parsons cites as something which will allow Bungie "to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force".

Finally, Bungie is set to "spin out" development of one of its "incubation projects", an unnamed action title set in a abrand new sci-fi universe, to a freshly formed PlayStation Studio, with Bloomberg's Jason Schreier having suggested that 75 ex-Bungie will be heading to this new studio.

Overall, Bungie's headcount will be reduced from 1,300 people to 850 as a result of the changes. "For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises," Parsons wrote, "To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly. It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon.

"Additionally, in 2023, 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.

"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."