Bungie lays off 220 developers in shocking bloodbath as it aggressively refocuses on Destiny and Marathon: 'We were overly ambitious'

In yet another bloodbath during a terrible two years for the games industry, Bungie has announced that it's laying off 220 people—roughly 17% of its workforce—across "every level of the company, including most of our executive and senior leader roles."

In a blog post titled "The New Path for Bungie," Bungie CEO Pete Parsons announced that "Due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions, it has become clear that we need to make substantial changes to our cost structure," and shift the studio's development focus entirely over to Destiny and upcoming extraction shooter Marathon. The new round of layoffs comes less than a year after Bungie's last bloodletting in October 2023, the casualties of which included veteran Halo composer Michael Salvatori.

Bungie is pitching the whole thing as a bloody but necessary pivot for the company, "a necessary decision to refocus our studio" after it spread itself too thin. Per Parsons, Bungie's goal for over half a decade has been "to ship games in three enduring, global franchises." To that end, the studio "set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from out existing teams," but came to realise "that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly," and overburdened studio support structures already preoccupied with Destiny and Marathon.

The company also points at its "rapid expansion" in 2023, which "ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, our quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall, and the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon the time needed," as factors that have led to the layoffs. "We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red."

Which means 220 people are out of a job, and it's currently unclear how many—if any—of them had any involvement in the decisions which have apparently overstretched the studio.

The way Bungie tells it, that number would have been higher, but the second part of its "New Path" is the studio "deepening our integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment, working to integrate 155 of our roles, roughly 12%, into SIE over the next few quarters." That decision has apparently saved "a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force."

The studio is also spinning out one of those aforementioned incubation projects "to form a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue its promising development." It's set to be an "action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe."

All of which, I have to imagine, will be scant comfort to the 220 people who now have to find new jobs, though Bungie at least says it's offering those affected "a generous exit package, including severance, bonus and health coverage."

It's shocking news in the wake of Destiny 2's Final Shape, an expansion that was, by all accounts, an example of the studio firing on all cylinders. It's also despair-inducingly familiar news. The games industry feels more unstable and febrile than ever, and even historically successful studios don't seem to be able to escape the swathe of layoffs that have decimated it over the last two years. Developers are increasingly living their lives at the point of the knife, and it seems unlikely it will stop here.