Bungie’s former employees have spoken out, and there’s a reason there’s a lot of details now coming out.
At the end of 2024, it came out that Bungie had lost as much as 700 employees within that year. While Bungie joined the wave of layoffs that has been gripping the industry, what’s extra troubling is that many of the people who left Bungie were not laid off.
We have also been reporting for years on rumored issues behind the scenes about Bungie, specifically their management, and how they have been acting after they closed their deal with Sony. The new accounts don’t necessarily corroborate the details of those rumors, but one could say they contribute to a community mural of Bungie’s toxic, abusive workplace.
In a new video, Destin Legarie shared quotes and details he received from some of those Bungie employees who he was able to speak to. As you can imagine, Destin didn’t share any identifiable information for these employees, but we do know he knows people in Bungie. While we only have Destin’s word that these are credible sources and real former employees, we can assume to a high degree that he is telling the truth.
We just reported on Bungie management’s plan to make Destiny 2 a subscription game. These former employees also shared some more general claims and opinions about what’s ailing in the company. We’ll share some key quotes that speak for themselves:
Bungie’s problems stem from a lack of player empathy, disconnected leadership, and a corporate-first culture.
The solution lies in holding leadership accountable.
I hope they get consolidated into Sony. That’s the path forward.
They also make some allegations about Bungie’s HR, which has also come up with other rumors. Legarie’s source claims that there was one specific person in HR who made sure to keep harassment allegations covered up. Said person was doing so because they were protecting a potential $ 5 million payout they were standing to get from Sony, as part of the terms of Bungie’s deal with Sony.
Legarie says this person has already left Bungie, and it’s possible that that happened as a consequence of either Bungie’s or Sony’s investigation. But it’s just hard to find anything favorable to make from this story.
Legarie did find that these former employees vouched for these people who were in Bungie’s management, who were not part of the company’s issues:
- Jason Jones
- Eric Osborn
- Luis Villegas
- Joe Blackburn
Blackburn announced his exit from Bungie and Destiny 2 in January 2024. Even then, several people in Bungie publicly thanked and praised him for his work in helping build Destiny 2. And we can tell that Blackburn was genuinely liked, because another one of Legarie’s sources referred to the company as “Toxic and shut down creatives on a core level.”
In the middle of all these allegations, it may be easy to forget that there are people caught in that middle, and it’s not the gamers. We’ll cap this off with one final statement from Legarie’s srouce:
It makes me sad to know there are so many talented people that can make great things but are still answering to management that can’t stop shooting themselves in the foot. They make bad decision after bad decision.
