Bungie, the studio behind the popular Destiny MMO franchise, has been impacted by a wave of layoffs, with many employees taking to social media to report job losses and redundancies. The news was broken by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who alleged an internal company meeting had taken place on Monday. Later, this was confirmed by employee reports, and a statement from Bungie CEO, Pete Parsons.
“Today is a sad day at Bungie as we say goodbye to colleagues who have all made a significant impact on our studio,” Parsons said, in the hours following the news breaking. “What these exceptional individuals have contributed to our games and Bungie culture has been enormous and will continue to be a part of Bungie long into the future.”
“These are truly talented people. If you have openings, I would highly recommend each and every one of them.”
At this stage, the scope of Bungie’s layoffs is not currently known, however, prominent and highly visible employees including Destiny 2 community manager and Bungie co-lead of accessibility Lianna Ruppert have already revealed their departures. As a bridge between Bungie’s developers and its social community, Ruppert played an important role in fostering and growing the rapport between Destiny 2 players.
Read: Media Molecule to lay off 15% of staff as part of “strategic changes”
“Working in games when you have high anxiety during a mass layoff trend (across the whole industry) is panicking at every new meeting invite like “is this the one where I lose everything” and that’s super fun,” Ruppert initially tweeted.
“Well… my heart is breaking for all affected,” a follow-up tweet read. “I am now looking for opportunities. I have 21 years of games industry experience in media, production, and community management. I’m processing, I’m so heartbroken. I don’t know what to do from here… this was my home. I feel so lost.”
Bungie is now the fifth PlayStation studio to face layoffs in the last few months, as Media Molecule, Visual Arts, Naughty Dog, and PixelOpus have all been impacted by recent changes. As for the exact reason, Bungie has not detailed this openly yet.
Per reports, the decision to lay off staff will have wide-ranging effects for the studio. As alleged by Bloomberg, this will include delays for two major Bungie projects – the next Destiny 2 expansion, titled The Final Shape (currently due for launch in February 2024) and Marathon, an upcoming extraction shooter.
We’ll likely learn more about the impact of these reported layoffs in the coming days.
