On Monday, October 30, 2023, in a new chapter of video game industry layoffs, approximately 100 workers – reported by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg – were laid off from Bungie, which represents a total of 8% of the company’s 1,200 staff members.
Since Sony just purchased them a little over a year ago, you might expect it to be the one clicking the red button on this one, just as they did for other of their studios, recent reports by Paul Tassi suggest that the ones behind these layoffs are no other than Bungie management themselves. This appears to be related to recent inside reports that Bungie was running a staggering 45% below yearly revenue projections.
Pete Parsons, on the other part, issued a brief message on X, marking October 30, 2023, as a sad day for the studio, and encouraging other companies to hire the people who were let go out of the blue.
According to reports, both from Bloomberg and IGN, The Final Shape, Destiny 2’s next expansion, and Marathon, Bungie’s new IP have been delayed.
In the case of The Final Shape, we are talking about a four-month delay from February to June. This would make Season 23 eight-months long, just about double the average length of a usual Destiny 2 season – unless Bungie has other plans.
What can we expect during that period, because after all, you could fit an entire Season during that delay. In the meantime, while this year has seen the best video game releases we have seen in a long time, 2023 has also been plagued with constant massive layoffs in the video game industry.
For the time being, we can only expect things to change due to PlayStation’s current restructuring. Let’s hope this doesn’t translate to more jobs being lost in an industry that is only expected to grow year after year.
