Bungie Lays Off 220 Developers While Announcing a New Studio

Bungie announces another wave of layoffs.

By Tanner Dedmon

Bungie announced another wave of layoffs this week with 220 roles impacted at the company. This follows a separate instance of layoffs from late last year, though Bungie formally acknowledged this one while saying that the 220 developers affected account for around 17% of the studio's workforce. In the same statement, Bungie also said that it was forming a new studio within Sony Interactive Entertainment to work on a new project it'd been incubating.

Pete Parsons, the CEO and chairman at Bungie, addressed the layoffs in a lengthy post shared on the Bungie site. Calling this a "difficult and painful day" while saying the path forward will be a "time of tremendous change for our studio," Parsons said the layoffs will affect senior and executive roles as well.

"Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, all of which have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie," Parsons said. "Our goal is to support them with the utmost care and respect. For everyone affected by this job reduction, we will be offering a generous exit package, including severance, bonus and health coverage."

While an exact number was not given, Parsons said that Bungie still has over 850 developers working on Destiny 2 and Marathon but that today would not be the time to talk about the new games. Instead, Parsons said the "focus is on supporting our people" despite over 200 of their roles having just been eliminated. 

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What Parsons did say, however, is that there will be a new studio formed within the PlayStation Studios group. Though it's owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Bungie is not considered part of the PlayStation Studios unit. This new studio will be part of that though with Parsons adding that, separately, 155 of its developers will be integrated into Sony Interactive Entertainment over the next few quarters. This means that Bungie's workforce is now being reduced by layoffs, by the 155 developers moving into Sony Interactive Entertainment, and by whatever impact this new studio has on the core Bungie team.

The new PlayStation Studios developer will work on an incubation project that Bungie has been developing, Parsons said. The game was not named, but it's said to be "an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe."

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