Sony is laying off majority of Destiny 2 team as studio head leaves Bungie

But don’t worry, Sony swears Bungie is working on new projects (Bungie)

Bungie is losing even more staff, after multiple waves of layoffs over the last few years, with both the Destiny 2 and Marathon teams impacted.

In the wake of Bungie’s announcement that Destiny 2 will no longer be receiving updates, it was rumoured that at least 50% of its workforce would shortly be laid off.

Sadly, this claim has proven accurate, as Sony’s own Hermen Hulst, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, announced earlier today that ‘most of’ the Destiny 2 team is being let go.

Not only that, but members of the Marathon team and Sony’s support studios who’ve assisted with Bungie’s work are affected too. At the same time it’s reported that studio head Justin Truman, is also stepping down.

No exact figures have been given and Hulst hasn’t specified which other studios are being impacted by the layoffs, but a not insubstantial number of employees are clearly losing their jobs.

Sony’s also decided to take a page out of Xbox’s book and publicly share the email Hulst sent to employees, detailing the cause of the layoffs and what comes next.

‘Over the past several months, together with Bungie leadership, we reviewed the studio’s long-term direction, development priorities, resource needs, and role within our broader portfolio strategy,’ explains Hulst.

‘We explored multiple alternatives before concluding that a reduction was necessary to align the studio’s resources with its current priorities and long-term goals.’

Hulst adds that despite the layoffs, Bungie has already begun ‘a new journey,’ suggesting that work has begun on at least one new project. In fact, it’s said that while support for Marathon will continue, the team is working on ‘incubation efforts for future projects.’

It’s already been reported that there are no plans for a Destiny 3 so it’s difficult to imagine what Bungie could work on next… unless Sony randomly decides it wants an Oni reboot.

There’s also no guarantee it will be a triple-A scale project and could be something much smaller. There have been rumours of Bungie working on a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) codenamed Gummy Bears, but it was also said that part of that workforce has already been integrated into a new team within PlayStation Studios.

Alternatively, Bungie could wind up becoming a support studio and primarily focus on assisting development on other first party titles, especially live service titles.

Regardless, it’s difficult to muster much enthusiasm for any future Bungie games when a majority of the team responsible for Destiny 2’s enduring popularity are no longer at the studio.

To be fair, Destiny 2 wasn’t exactly thriving before Sony decided to pull the plug. In 2023, it saw a sharp dive in popularity, which was soon followed by layoffs.

Even after The Final Shape expansion was received more positively the following year, Sony said it didn’t meet expectations and wound up laying off even more people.

An anonymous Bungie source claimed that the studio overpromised what it could deliver when Sony acquired the studio, for about £2.7 billion in 2022, and Sony itself admitted last year it was treating the acquisition as a loss.

It doesn’t help that Bungie was brought in to assist with Sony’s ambitious live service game plans, which it appears to have mostly abandoned, following the failure of Concord.

Speaking of, if you need a morbid laugh, if you delete the ‘2’ from the URL for the PlayStation Studios blog post about the Bungie layoffs, you’re taken to another publicly shared email by Hulst about the decision to shut down Concord developer Firewalk Studios and mobile developer Neon Koi.

Some live service projects persist, like Marathon and Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Hunters Gathering spin-off, but plenty of others have been quietly cancelled while Sony has focused on hyping up traditional single-player games like Insomniac’s Wolverine.

Sony has yet to officially state whether it thinks Marathon is doing well or not (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

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