Jeff Grubb has shared what he knows about what’s happening to Bungie in light of the recent announcement.
Bungie CEO Pete Parsons revealed that the company would be laying off 220 employees, and a further 155 would be transferred to other studios or divisions in PlayStation. This totals roughly one third of Bungie’s workforce leaving the developer.
Jeff Grubb discussed this news with co-host Lucy James in the latest episode of Gamespot’s Game Mess Mornings. Jeff does have insider information, and presumably has sources in or who can get information from Bungie.
This is what Jeff said in the show:
“What’s happening is this is it. PlayStation Studios is taking over Bungie. Hermen Hulst will be in charge. Some of those will be reassigned to other places inside of PlayStation Studios. They’re going to try to give a lot of those people homes.
It’s rough because as far as my understanding is, a lot of people at Bungie were not recognizing that this was going to happen. Because they thought, hey, we got past it, we had a really good DLC, we had a really good expansion, we should be good.
And it seemed like no matter what The Final Shape could have done, it could never have done what was needed to do to avoid this. So yeah, it’s looking very rough over there.”
While Sony and Bungie have yet to confirm these details, and are unlikely too in any case, it lines up with what we’ve heard from other people who have sources for Bungie and Destiny 2.
YouTuber and streamer Aztecross shared the rumor last March that Sony already saw Bungie as a failed investment. Apparently, Sony management were disappointed in Bungie’s management, who were apparently going so far as to keep rescheduling meetings with Sony to avoid discussing changes. And this quote from Aztecross is particularly prescient:
“Sony believes that the finances will not allow Bungie to avoid a takeover even with another round of layoffs, as that would cannibalize development and future revenue.”
It seems that this lines up with Pete Parsons admitting that Bungie was running itself to bankruptcy, so even with the success of The Final Shape, the management had failed to protect themselves from Sony.
It’s certainly distasteful to imagine Sony and Bungie management playing games like this, as it seems that their developers were made the ball, to be tossed around and discarded. Bungie’s game developers deserved better than that, and overall, a studio with the legacy that Bungie has deserved better than to come to this.
We wish the exiting employees of Bungie well, and hope those who are laid off can find placement back in the video game industry.
