Reports – Destiny spin-off cancelled and The Final Shape underperformed, but Bungie layoffs were always planned

thesixthaxis.com:

Following the news of significant layoffs at Bungie earlier this week, there’s been a lot of further reporting on what this means for the company’s future and how they’ve ended up in this place. Senior staff have left, a new Destiny game has reportedly been cancelled, and many have called for CEO Pete Parsons to quit for mismanaging the company over the last few years.

The layoffs were announced on Wednesday by Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, with 220 of the company’s 1300 headcount losing their jobs, while a further 155 would be able to move across to the wider PlayStation business, and around 40 to form a new studio and take on an incubation project. That’s roughly a third of the company’s workforce, and follows on from 100 employees losing their jobs last October, leaving the new headcount at around 850 employees.

As part of this, it’s reported that key Bungie figures from Destiny 2’s early revival have departed the company. Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy have apparently left (per Jeff Grubb’s Game Mess Decides podcast) following the cancellation of their Destiny spin-off game, codenamed Payback. This had been reported as being Destiny 3, but as is often the case, further details are leaked once people are no longer employed, and Jason Schreier’s sources state it was not a direct sequel, and actually cancelled some time ago.

The layoffs have been met with a lot of shock from outside viewers, given the very positive reception of Destiny 2: The Final Shape. Bungie had delayed the expansion’s release in an effort to come back from failing to meet financial expectations with the previous year’s Lightfall, and by all accounts, The Final Shape was the narrative finale that Destiny needed and deserved.

However, Stephen Totilo reports that the deep job cuts were planned to happen regardless of the reception or success of The Final Shape. The need for job cuts was only made worse by The Final Shape having “sold less than Lightfall”, despite its positive reception. As Parsons stated