Bungie misrepresented its funds and had considerably overextended itself when Sony acquired the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022, former employees claimed in a brand new Recreation File report printed within the wake of Wednesday’s layoffs.
It was apparently unhealthy sufficient that at the very least one supply described as a “well-connected former employee” went as far as to say that Bungie confronted dire penalties if the acquisition hadn’t occurred, saying that the “alternate historical past is insolvency.”
Their feedback paint the image of a studio that was struggling regardless of the success of Future and Future 2 attributable to supporting too many tasks and different issues. Following the Sony acquisition, Recreation File’s sources declare Bungie repeatedly missed its monetary targets, resulting in roughly 100 workers being laid off in November 2023.
A second spherical of layoffs adopted on Wednesday, impacting one other 220 folks, or 17 % of the studio’s workforce, with one other 155 being built-in elsewhere in Sony Interactive Leisure. Bungie can also be spinning out one in every of its incubation tasks to kind a brand new studio underneath the PlayStation banner.
Inside Bungie, the layoffs had been anticipated for a while. In December 2023, IGN reported that the sensation throughout the studio was that it confronted extra reductions if The Last Form did not do properly. However in response to Recreation File’s supply, even The Last Form being a serious blockbuster success could not have stopped the layoffs. Certainly, with Future 2 on the wane some seven years after its unique launch, The Last Form reportedly didn’t outsell the earlier enlargement, Lightfall, regardless of being a vital success.
Former Bungie employees and different members of the video games business have been vocal within the wake of the layoffs, with a lot of them blaming the studio’s management led by CEO Pete Parsons. Their sentiments had been echoed by these in Recreation File’s report, claiming that Bungie “bought issues they had been simply not capable of ship.” Parsons, for his half, blamed the cuts on the rising prices of growth and “enduring financial circumstances,” confirming that the studio had been “working within the pink” following delays to The Last Form and Marathon.
Bungie is much from alone in being hit with layoffs, with different publishers together with EA, Xbox, Riot, and others additionally introducing cutbacks in what has been a tough 12 months for the video games business. For now, it would proceed to focus its efforts totally on Future and the upcoming Marathon, which doesn’t have a launch date and is at present set for a while in 2025.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s Information Director in addition to co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Ship her a DM at @the_katbot.
