EFFORTPOST Effortpost: Vidya consoomers , business experts , and train wreck enjoyers , Gather around as I regail to you the latest development in Bungie's impotent attempts to stay afloat and how a 30 year old legendary gayming studio has been brought to the edge of total collapse.

Prologue:

Before I can talk about Bungie's current bed-pooping I have to give you the context of yesteryear's bed pooping. During the thirdish quarter of 2023 the full weight of Bungie's massive screw up by releasing one of the dumbest, anti-climactic, and poorly written game expansions (even by destiny standards) had been realized. This gave Pete Parsons the CEO of Bungie, you're going to be seeing a lot of seethe surrounding this guy, the justification needed to start layoffs in the company.

https://bungie.fandom.com/wiki/Layoffs_2023

On Monday, October 30, Bungie laid off a sizable chunk of its staff in departments including community, QA, audio, and more. According to a report from IGN, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons cited Destiny 2's declining performance in 2023 as a cause. A report from Bloomberg noted that Bungie's upcoming projects were internally delayed as part of the move, with The Final Shape quietly moving to June 2024.

That underline section is going to be important later.

In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept "the right people" to continue work on Destiny 2.

This tone deaf remark caught Pete a lot of flak, as if he would give a shit, and he was criticized for not taking a paycut to prevent the layoffs. He instead chose to purchase 2.4 million worth of Antique cars and offer to show his female employees his collection.

https://kotaku.com/bungie-pete-parsons-layoffs-classic-cars-sony-buyout-de-1851610196

Speaking to multiple current and recently laid off employees, IGN has confirmed reports that Bungie took responsibility for the layoffs, rather than laying them at the feet of parent company Sony. Parsons told employees that the layoffs were largely due to underperformance of Destiny 2 over the last year, as well as lower-than-expected preorders for upcoming expansion The Final Shape.

As it so happens Lightfall was actually Destiny 2's best performing expansion. The newest expansion The Final Shape failed to break the previous expansions poulation record on steam (although that could also be sttributed to the amount of server issues during the release of TFS. Despite this the expansion still technically "underperformed" because bungie had likely over-promised Destiny 2's performance after releasing expansions during the height of the pandemic when everyone was trapped inside playing videogames.

Employees were also told that Destiny 2 player sentiment was at an all-time low. Sources tell IGN that this issue had been flagged to leadership repeatedly for months prior to the layoffs, with employees begging for necessary changes to win players back.

One former Bungie employee recalled that they were repeatedly assured following the 2022 Sony acquisition of Bungie that there would be no layoffs, and cited an item from a Sony quarterly report that claimed $1.2 billion of the $4 billion acquisition was going explicitly toward staff retention. Multiple employees confirmed that money was distributed to employees who were fully vested, with money split into multiple payments over time and varying based on discipline and seniority.

>t-there's not going to be any layoffs r-right Pete?

>yeah yeah sure, could you pipe down I'm trying to order more ferraris.

Of course since then there have as of now been 2 rounds of layoff. womp womp!

The first round of layoffs targeted those who had stock in the company cutting a lot of senior workers including the lady that designed the flipping Halo logo and Michael Salvatori the composer of pretty much the entirety of the music of the 10 year Destiny Saga ever since they canned Marty O'donnell. Around 100 workers got axed, some very high notoriety, and this isn't even including workers who got shifted into sony positions.

Today's Crisis

https://old.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/1egpwx6/the_new_path_for_bungie/

As of writing this 3 days ago another hundred or so Bungie employees had found out they had just been uncerimoniously laid off in the same darn community update that any redditor can read for patch notes. This time the layoffs were centered around shuttering all projects that weren't Destiny or Marathon related. This means those projects that were delayed in the underline section before were all cancelled. This time around a lot of leadership roles had been hit as well. Mark Noseworthy and Luke Smith, two guys known for almost killing the game at least 3 times, and one of which had been with the company since before Reach, had been let go. These guys were responsible for side projects and bringing Destiny into other mediums such as T.V Shows. With them gone there's nothing left in the works besides Marathon.

https://old.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/1ehxulq/mark_nosesworth_and_luke_smith_are_said_to_have/

Bungie shrank from 1300 to 850

Sony's Bungie is shrinking from 1,300 people to 850:

• 220 laid off

• 155 moving to Sony

• ~75 to a new studio

"We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red," says CEO Pete Parsons

https://x.com/jasonschreier/status/1818674500013097178

On top of the layoffs the annual plan for the release of Destiny content has been alterd, and the consensus is looking like future releases are not going to live up to the previous standards. In other words this 7 year old game might actually die this time, for real...maybe. Idk tbh.

https://old.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/1ehuabx/liz_from_d2_leaks_posting_new_info_regarding/

This leaves Marathon, as the sole entity for Bungie to rest its future on. Bungie has to hope an extraction based looter shooter, a reputably anticasual gaming experience. As well as a hero shooter which have become comically despised by gaymers in the current day (see Concord) will be enough to save them from complete collapse.

This is all that exists of Marathon right now. If I'm not mistaken the studio behind these cgi trailers and cutscenes for Bungie got shutdown too. Little else is even known about this game.

Could be worse though. They could be DICE.

Tl;dr

*Bungie got bought by sony in 2022

*Bungie released a shit expansion, and had a round of layoffs in 2023

*Bungie released a good expansion, and had another round of layoffs in 2024

*Bungie's current cash cow Destiny 2 is being put out to pasture

*Bungie has no other projects in development right now besides Marathon

*The future of this studio lies in the fate of an extraction based hero shooter

*Pete Parons like cars

___

I did it... I effortposted !jannies