Bungie is laying off around 100 staffers as well as delaying two of its forthcoming titles: Marathon and Destiny 2’s forthcoming expansion, The Final Shape. The latter is now expected to launch in June 2024, while the former won’t be expected until 2025.
The layoffs, first reported by Bloomberg, are part of ongoing cuts within Sony’s PlayStation division. Ex-Bungie employees have begun posting on social media about the layoffs, which impact around eight percent of the studio’s workforce. Sony purchased Bungie last year in a $3.6 billion deal that was supposed to see the Destiny developer operate as an independent unit within the company.
“Today is a sad day at Bungie as we say goodbye to colleagues who have all made a significant impact on our studio,” Bungie CEO Pete Parsons wrote on X, formerly Twitter. According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the layoffs come several weeks after a meeting in which execs said that Bungie’s revenue was 45 percent lower than projected, and in which Parsons blamed Lightfall, Destiny 2’s most recent (and poorly received) expansion, for a drop in player retention leading to the shortfall.
The Final Shape is an ambitious new expansion pack for Destiny 2 that is meant to conclude many of the franchise’s most significant storylines. It was originally expected to be released on both Sony’s and Microsoft’s platforms in February 2024. Marathon is based on the beloved first-person shooter Bungie initially released on macOS back in 1994. The new game, now delayed to 2025, is expected to be a PvP “extraction” game. Bungie never guaranteed it would be released in 2024 but had hinted at that plan.
Bungie’s layoffs are the latest in what’s been a brutal year for game developers. Epic Games cut about 830 jobs, roughly 16 percent of its workforce, in September. The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog also reportedly cut contractor jobs earlier this month, while Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red laid off about 100 people in July. Niantic also laid off 230 staffers and shut down other games to focus on Pokémon Go in June.
Update, October 31st, 4:45PM ET: Updated to include the estimated extent of the layoffs as well as context about Bungie’s missed revenue projections, both first reported by Bloomberg.
