Destiny creators Bungie lay off 220 people and form new studio within Sony to stave off financial ruin

rockpapershotgun.com:

Destiny and Marathon developers Bungie are laying off 220 people - around 17% of their total workforce - as studio heads try to offset a financial crisis brought on by "overly ambitious" expansion, individual project "misfires", and a wider economic downturn in 2023. Bungie are also transferring a further 155 roles to parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment, and are spinning out an untitled incubation project - an "action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe" - to form a new PlayStation studio.

The news follows months of reporting that all is not well at Bungie - the company made an undisclosed number of reductions last year, and was rumoured to be facing a full Sony takeover, with much riding on the fortunes of Destiny 2's Final Shape DLC.

Writing on the developer's site today, CEO Pete Parsons gave a compressed account of how Bungie has ended up in such dire straits. "For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises," he 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," Parsons continued. "We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red."

Parsons's comments about "overly ambitious" expansion during the Covid lockdown years continue a depressing theme. Back at GDC, Larian