Bungie layoffs 220 employees

Game developer Bungie, currently owned by Sony, laid off 220 of its employees, about 17% of its staff.

This comes nine months after Bungie reduced its workforce by around 100 employees out of a total of 1,200 as part of a broader cost-saving initiative affecting all Sony studios.

For Bungie, this is the second round of layoffs since Sony acquired it for US$3.6 billion on January 31, 2022.

Bungie shared a post written by company CEO Pete Parsons via X (formerly Twitter) about its decision.

“This morning, I’m sharing with all of you some of the most difficult changes we’ve ever had to make as a studio. Due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions, it has become clear that we need to make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon.”

With today’s layoffs come two immediate major changes at Bungie.

First, Bungie will enhance its collaboration with Sony Interactive Entertainment by integrating 155 positions, approximately 12%, into SIE over the upcoming quarters. “SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify roles for as many of our people as possible, enabling us together to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force.”

Second, Bungie is collaborating with PlayStation Studios leadership to establish a new studio within PlayStation Studios. This new studio will focus on developing one of their incubation projects, an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe.

Bungie is known as the original developer of the Halo franchise.

[Source]: Bungie.net: The New Path for Bungie – [Archive] – [Screenshot].