Bungie May Have Lost 700 Employees In Less Than A Year – And Not Everyone Was Laid Off

While the fallout around Concord was immediate and rough, Sony continues to reckon with the consequences of their acquisition of Bungie. As it turns out, we didn’t get a clear picture of the situation at Bungie even then.

This revolves around a recent report by The Game Post. By their estimation, Bungie lost over 700 employees in less than 12 months. They made these calculations based on recent statements by former Bungie Chief Legal Officer Don McGowan.

According to McGowan, Bungie had 1,600 employees before they started layoffs in October 2023. McGowan was one of many employees laid off, and they laid off around 8 % of their staff.

We did report on this as well. After the word spread as a rumor, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons confirmed the layoffs on Twitter. The studio later told IGN that they fired 100 out of 1,200 employees at the time. We see the disparity between McGowan’s statement and Bungie’s, but we’ll get back to that later.

As you know, they more famously laid off 17 percent of workers last July of this year. That amounted to 220 employees who were laid off, but another 155 of their employees were being moved into Sony in different roles. After all these exits, Bungie would be left with 850 employees.

The Game Post argues that that means they lost a total of 700 employees in less than a year, which would be a reduction of 47 %. That’s staggering as it is, but it may not even be the full story.

Paul Tassi responded to this story on Twitter, saying:

“one underreported aspect of all this is that a lot of Bungie people are just…leaving, not necessarily being laid off”

To add to this, we would point out that there’s a level of uncertainty on whether certain employees left or were laid off. For example, we reported on Joe Blackburn, Destiny 2’s director, and Carrie Gouskous, Marathon’s executive producer, leaving the company. But it wasn’t quite clear if they were fired or resigned, or as one can speculate, forced to resign.

But it is easy to see that those Bungie employees who were in a position to do so would choose to leave. We had been reporting on Destiny 2’s sinking performance, as well as rumors of trouble behind the scenes, before they were even acquired by Sony.

When all the numbers are counted, in the end this has been a mess for Bungie’s developers and their fans, and Bungie’s management has failed to sustain what was once one of the top live service games in the industry. Sony’s purchase of Bungie certainly benefited Bungie in the short term, but their future is as uncertain as ever.