Bungie To Lay Off Staff Amid Restructuring Despite Game Success
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Man, the hits just keep on coming for the video game industry, don’t they?
Yesterday, it was announced that Bungie would be laying off about 17% of its labor force, bringing the total list of labor casualties to 220 individuals. This is the second round of mass layoffs the company has endured, following a round last year that accompanied an industry-wide slew of mass layoffs. The bleeding seemed to have slowed lately, but this reopening has soured many to the company’s CEO in an industry that is already grossly demoralized.
The announcement was made by Bungie CEO Pete Parsons through a statement to employees. It was filled with the typical administrative jargon about difficult times for the company, and supposed struggling financials. This is oddly all on the heels of an incredibly well-received expansion of Destiny 2’s latest expansion, The Final Shape, as well as the highly anticipated successor to Marathon. It’s also only two years removed from a massive acquisition by Sony. In a blog post, he claims they tried everything to avoid the layoffs, but as is usual in these situations, he doesn’t quite state what those alternatives were that just didn’t quite help as much as this.
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Parsons is not coming out of this unscathed, it seems, despite attempts to shield himself from ridicule by locking his social media accounts in the morning (they have since reopened, but he has said nothing regarding the announcement at the time of this writing). He is facing widespread criticism from industry workers and players about the decision, and even calls to resign, claiming his leadership (he’s been with Bungie for two decades) is poor and it’s coming at the cost of the livelihoods of hundreds of skilled people in the industry. Probably doesn’t look well that he went on a classic car shopping spree (20 cars for $2.3 million) after the Sony acquisition to the tune of 3.6 billion dollars, and while layoffs continued.
Sony is integrating Bungie further into its organization. 150 of the remaining employees are being transferred to work directly for Sony, and a smaller group will be spun off into another PlayStation studio, stopping production on a new game that was in development.
The once proudly independent studio has essentially been gutted of that status with these developments.
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