Bungie to Lay Off 220 Workers, Will Be Further Integrated into Sony | Push Square

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Destiny 2 developer Bungie has confirmed it will be letting go of 220 employees «due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions». As a result, the team will be further integrated into PlayStation Studios as a further 155 workers transition from Bungie to positions within Sony. 29 per cent of positions within Bungie will disappear, including the majority of executive and senior lead roles.

In a post to the Bungie blog, its CEO Pete Parsons said: «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.» He continues to explain Bungie must restructure with more «realistic goals and viable financials».

Born out of Bungie

Bungie will now integrate 155 employees into Sony Interactive Entertainment over the next couple of quarters. «SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify roles for as many of our people as possible, enabling us together to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force,» explained Parsons. The CEO also confirms that a new team within PlayStation Studios is being created to continue development of one of Bungie's «incubation projects».

«We are working with PlayStation Studios leadership to spin out one of our incubation projects – an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe – to form a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue its promising development,» said Parsons. Work on Destiny 2 and Marathon will continue under Bungie.

Expanding on how Bungie ended up in this situation, Parsons said the studio became stretched too thinly across multiple incubation projects, and its studio support structures grew to «a larger level than we could