As we head towards the holiday season, some devastating news has hit renowned game developer company Bungie. Bungie had an internal meeting during which they announced what seems to be a wide range of layoffs. Artists, writers, social media managers, community managers, those who worked in QA, player support, publishing, legal, production and others seem to have been unexpectedly laid off. There’s even an unconfirmed rumor as of the making of this video that Michael Salvatori, Bungie co-composer of a lot of music and soundtracks since Halo Combat Evolved has been laid off as well.
Since news broke, Bungie reportedly removed over 40 open job positions from the hiring section of its website downsizing the previous 75 hiring positions to just 19.
While the exact number of people laid off isn’t known yet as more and more former employees are still speaking out, it’s safe to say that the impact will be quite profound. Among those who’ve publicly stated that they have been laid off is Destiny 2 Community Manager and Accessibility Co-Lead Lianna Rupert who’s been holding the fort down with her team ever since Dylan Gafner or dmg04, another great former community manager for Bungie departed and became the community manager for Riot Games’ Valorant.
Gafner actually commented on the layoffs stating:
“Getting texts from friends impacted by layoffs this morning. It is frustrating – infuriating even – to continue seeing people who strap in to do good work losing their financial security due to poor management. The continued echoes of poor decisions made that FEEL avoidable. In a few of these cases, knowing how much effort these folks put in during incredibly difficult development and sentimental times puts a sour taste in the mouth. Proactive/reactive work, always at the end of the funnel and having to make due with what they had. And now, let go.”
A rather interesting statement by Bungie’s CEO Pete Parsons also had this to say:
“Today is a sad day at Bungie as we say goodbye to colleagues who have all made a significant impact on our studio. 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.”
These layoffs of course come in the wake of Sony’s acquisition of Bungie last year in 2022 when Sony paid over $3.7 billion US dollars to get the game developer studio. The tone of Bungie’s CEO’s statement seems to imply it was a decision made by the higherups at Sony who have also been laying off others at different studios under the Sony corporation much like their industry peers like Microsoft have been doing.
And despite Bungie’s leadership irresponsibly assuring employees who are often called family by the same leadership that the acquisition would not result in layoffs or restructuring of the company when pretty much most of us knew that’s usually not the case when things like this happen, the unfortunate layoffs have still occurred. This is even more shocking when you consider the fact that 1.2 billion US dollars of that 3.7 billion was reserved for employee retention costs in the form of incentives and shares. This news also comes after Twisted Metal and God of War creator David Jaffe recently broke the news of a shakeup in corporate leadership at Sony in regards to the departure of Playstation’s Head of Production Connie Booth which follows the announced retirement of Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and Playstation head Jim Ryan.
Getting back on track, as someone who doesn’t play Destiny 2, even I am familiar with the reputation and stellar work of not just the veteran developers who have been laid off but also the community managers who have been an integral part of communications between the company and the playerbase so much so that in the 2019 The Game Awards, Destiny 2 won Best Community Support and has been repeatedly nominated for said award.
Thus, this calls into question a lot of things such as the quality of Bungie’s primary moneymaker Destiny 2 as far as both communal and gameplay enjoyment go. It also raises questions around Bungie’s future projects including The Final Shape expansion for Destiny 2 and the revival of the Marathon IP as an online extraction shooter which is already on shaky legs marketing-wise. Layoffs like these tend to not just affect a company’s products but people as well including those who remain working at the company. They also tend to affect perception of the company’s health and by extension product reliability by the consumers or the gamers in this case which is also not great for anyone still involved.
Fortunately, we already have some details on what these layoffs may mean as far as the mentioned projects go thanks to Jason Schreier from Bloomberg who reported earlier today after the layoffs:
“Bungie recently delayed an upcoming Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, until June 2024 from February 2024 pushing it out of Sony Group Corp’s current fiscal year, said the people who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Bungie’s next game, Marathon, slipped to 2025.”
To clarify, this means with the downsizing of the teams at Bungie, both Destiny 2’s The Final Shape and Marathon that had their expected launch dates adjusted for them BEFORE the layoffs as reported by Bloomberg, may be either further delayed or at the very least have potential quality issues which doesn’t bode well for either the leadership and their shareholders at Sony. And somewhat puzzling is that if Marathon was slated for launch in 2024 as implied, that would have technically been a good thing at least for the investment return for Sony from Bungie considering their only major revenue contribution is still Destiny 2.
I do hope that regardless of what happens with either Bungie or Sony, that the people who were laid off unjustly manage to land safely somewhere else with companies that hopefully will appreciate them more while offering more financial security.
Yet given that while 2023 has been an amazing year for gamers with so many good games coming out perhaps a year we’ll even look back upon fondly as one of the best years for gaming, the opposite is true for game developers and others who still struggle with job security in an industry fast approaching a value of over 400 billion dollars in the coming years so depressingly this latest round of layoffs which follows after other massive layoffs may just be the beginning of corporate downsizing post-2023.
In fact, this isn’t just a Sony thing, it’s unfortunately an old industry-wide problem where questionable executive management and what seems to be poor budgeting decisions made for the purpose of appearing financially attractive on the market often deprive passionate people of their livelihoods. Just this year alone at least 6,100 layoffs have occurred at companies like EA, Epic Games, Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, Embracer Group and dozens upon dozens of other companies with probably even more layoffs gone unreported or undisclosed by said companies.
Now, what might have gone under a lot of people’s radar especially after this debacle at Bungie is Microsoft’s restructuring and integration of Zenimax Media which encompasses big developer studios such as Bethesda Game Studios, Zenimax Online Studios, Arkane Studios, id Software and so on.
In an internal memo, Microsoft Gaming and Xbox CEO Phil Spencer has ordered a reorganization following Microsoft’s finalized purchase of Activision Blizzard where Zenimax entities are concerned. To summarize:
ZeniMax will continue to operate as a limited integration entity led by Jamie Leder, President and CEO, reporting to Matt Booty, the head of Microsoft Studios. All ZeniMax development studios and ZeniMax Central Services teams will continue reporting to Jamie to maintain and optimize current content development and production cycles.
Spencer also notes that a number of Zenimax leaders will now report to Microsoft leaders with whom their work most closely aligns in this new organized structure.
As president of Xbox, Sarah Bond will lead the teams of Devices, Player & Creator Experiences, Platform Engineering, Strategy, Business Planning, Data & Analytics and Business Development with their corporate vice president leads reporting to her.
For Zenimax IT and Facilities and the Activision Blizzard merge-work, Dave McCarthy has been announced as taking responsibility for both as Microsoft Gaming’s Chief Operations Officer. And with the departure of Pete Hines recently along with what seems to be a shuffle in some of the Bethesda Game Studios staff including the requested departure of Kurt Kuhlmann, Microsoft has appointed Jerret West as Chief Marketing Officer and lead of Bethesda’s Publishing team.
For those of you who didn’t watch my video on why Redfall was doomed to fail from the start, Microsoft was very very hands-off of all Zenimax studios and developers after they paid over 7.5 billion US dollars for the entire conglomerate. They were so hands off, that the developers of Redfall actually hoped that upper leadership from Microsoft and Xbox would take a look at how bad Redfall’s development and team management was and kill or restart Redfall.
But Microsoft didn’t and more than likely since Redfall bombed with terrible reception, it seems this new structure and a tighter rein on all Zenimax entities are to ensure something like that doesn’t happen again. As for how this restructuring will affect the backbone of the companies, the employees, it’s hard to say if there are even more layoffs coming which I really hope isn’t the case.
In a lot of ways, it’s cruel to often discuss the state of games or gaming without even thinking about the wellbeing of the people who make them so if you guys want to check out the sources used for this video and continue the conversations in your communities they are linked in the video’s description.