Bungie’s Mass Layoff Was Reportedly Planned Months Ago, Regardless Of The Final Shape’s Success (Or Lack Thereof)

Earlier this week Pete Parsons, chief executive officer at Bungie and (probably) the only person at the studio to spend $2.4M on retro cars announced that the studio would be making a few changes, the most notable one being it would layoff 220 employees.

To say that the announcement was surprising to the developers being laid off and the players who enjoy Bungie’s games is a bit of an understatement, and the announcement sparked a wave of backlash against Parsons and the rest of Bungie leadership.

What was particularly surprising is the fact that Bungie’s latest release, The Final Shape, which was arguably the biggest expansion in Destiny 2’s history, has by all metrics done extremely well.

A new report however reveals that regardless of the success of The Final Shape, these layoffs still would’ve happened, because they had been part of Bungie’s plans since earlier this year.

Speaking to Game File, three sources claim that these cuts were decided on months before The Final Shape released. Whether or not it was a huge hit, the cuts would have, and did, happen.

The report even reiterates what we heard from Bungie employees the last time there were layoffs at Bungie – that the blame isn’t with Sony – but with Bungie’s own leadership.

“I think Sony overpaid for Bungie. I think Bungie sold things they were just not able to deliver,” a source told Game File.

For his own part, Parsons has been called “a joke” by former employees, and many have directly called for him to resign, with former and current employees criticizing leadership, Parsons specifically.

It should be noted that in his announcement of the cuts, Parsons gave a version of the events that led Bungie to this point. Leadership made choices to establish multiple teams each working on big projects, budgets and talent were stretched further than they could go, and Bungie began to lose a lot money.

Once leadership realized that this was happening, they made “exhaustive efforts” to avoid layoffs but ultimately decided to go with layoffs. Though those “exhaustive efforts” would allegedly never have included cutting the salaries of executives, the people otherwise known as leadership, the ones in charge who made the decisions that led to Bungie losing money.

Having all that in mind brings up an interesting query: how many developers could Bungie have kept on if they had, say, an extra $2.4 million to keep people employed?

Source – [Game File]