Bungie employees say they were caught off-guard by 17% staff reduction | TechCrunch

Bungie, the gaming company that created sci-fi hits such as Halo, Destiny, and Marathon, has laid off 220 employees, roughly a 17% reduction to its workforce, the company announced Wednesday. This is Bungie’s second round of layoffs since it was taken over by Sony in 2022.

Two former Bungie employees affected by Wednesday’s layoffs say they were caught off guard by the workforce reduction. Bungie recently released Destiny 2: The Final Shape, and the project exceeded all internal projections, according to the former employees. In recent months, management had signaled in team meetings that the company was doing well.

Tzivi Sherman, a sound designer at Bungie for more than two years, said he found out about the layoffs from Bungie’s corporate Twitter account in a post on X. He found out his role was impacted shortly after.

“Saw the tweet then about 45 minutes later got an email with a meeting request and an ominous title,” Sherman told TechCrunch.

Although Sherman found out scrolling through social media, he says he’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since Bungie’s layoffs in October.

“It kind of feels like [upper management] is being very two-faced about it,” said Guilhem Lagarde, a product support technician at Bungie affected by Wednesday’s layoffs, in an interview with TechCrunch. “Like they’re telling us one thing, but behind the scenes, something else is happening.”

Sony’s purchase of Bungie in 2022 kicked off a culture shift within the game studio, according to both former employees. This spring, however, Sony and Bungie pushed for a more active integration of the two companies, Lagarde said.

Over the last two years, massive layoffs in the gaming industry have become somewhat common, especially following major acquisitions, as is the case here. Kotaku estimates that more than 8,800 video game industry workers have been let go in 2024 alone. Investors continue to be interested in the lucrative gaming industry, but developers building the technology have not been as lucky.

In a press release, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons said Wednesday’s layoffs were a “necessary decision to refocus our studio.” Parsons also mentioned the integration, and said Bungie is working to integrate 155 employees with Sony to reduce the need to layoff more employees.

In the same press release announcing layoffs, Bungie announced it’s working on a new game. Parsons said Bungie is spinning out one of its incubation projects to form a new studio within Playstation Studios. The CEO described it as “an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe.”

This layoff compounds with another layoff in October 2023, where 100 Bungie employees were let go and two game releases were delayed. Parsons said the company still has over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon.

“There already weren’t enough people to cover the work we were doing and now there’s even less,” said Sherman. “I think everything that was a part of Bungie’s identity: culture, values, camaraderie – is all gone.”

Bungie did not immediately respond to requests for comment.