Bungie has clarified part of the reshuffling that has been going on in the company.
Yesterday, we reported on several Bungie employees announcing their new roles in Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Today, one of the people we covered, Bridget O’Neill, clarified her new status in Bungie and Sony. She shared this statement on Twitter:
“New Job+ Announcement: I am taking on a new role as Senior Director of Creative at PlayStation Studios, but I am not leaving Bungie!
Bungie Creative Studios is joining PlayStation to build the foundation for a creative team that can support all PlayStation live service games.”
O’Neill also talked to GameDeveloper about the company shakeup. She explained that Bungie’s Creative Studio will still be working on Destiny 2 and Marathon.
At the same time, they will now also be “sharing our experience…with other studios that are building live service games.
…With PlayStation and Bungie working together, we will be able to give a huge jumpstart on development for new games as they enter this super competitive market.”
When Bungie initially announced layoffs, we were told that some of their staff would be moved to PlayStation, to help mitigate the changes in their business. Bungie and Sony didn’t say that they would keep some staff working for both Sony or Bungie.
We can take this one of two ways. Either Sony is trying to be clever in communicating this, or they have made new changes to their arrangements since that announcement.
So we do have to think about this for a minute. It doesn’t quite make sense for these Bungie employees to now be taking two salaries under two new job positions. It also doesn’t make sense that Sony found an opportunity to give Bungie employees two full time jobs.
If this is about them using softer language, then Bungie Creative Studios may be trained to describe their new job position in specific ways. After all, they can continue to work on Bungie’s games in their new position in Sony. Destiny 2 and Marathon are Sony live service games too, so they would continue to work on them in the same capacity.
If the situation is that Sony made new arrangements, then maybe we can hope that Sony has figured out a new way to make Bungie successful again. Maybe it’s because Sony has taken over the leadership of Bungie that they realized that the studio’s situation was not that dire after all.
If anything, Bungie and Sony would have to show us how well things have turned out when they release future content for Destiny 2, and when they launch Marathon next year.
