Bungie lays off 220 folks, will arrange spin-off studio inside Son – WGB

Bungie, the builders of Halo and Future, has introduced that 220 folks, roughly 17% of its workforce, is being laid off.

In an open letter, Pete Parsons of Bungie made the announcement, blaming rising prices of growth and ongoing financial components.

“Because of rising prices of growth and trade shifts in addition to enduring financial circumstances,” mentioned Parsons. “Which means starting at the moment, 220 of our roles will probably be eradicated, representing roughly 17% of our studio’s workforce.  ”

Parsons goes on to debate two different main adjustments. The primary is that 155 roles at Bungie will probably be “built-in” into Sony. Parsons feedback that these folks would ” in any other case have been affected by the discount in pressure.”

Bungie can also be working with Sony to arrange a brand new studio constructed round one in every of their present tasks within the incubation stage. This new sport is seemingly set inside a “brand-new science-fantasy universe.”

Parsons goes on by trying to justify how Bungie wound up on this place.

“For over 5 years, it has been our objective to ship video games in three enduring, international franchises,” writes Parsons. “To appreciate that ambition, we arrange a number of incubation tasks, every seeded with senior growth leaders from our present groups. We finally realized that this mannequin stretched our expertise too skinny, too rapidly.  It additionally compelled our studio assist constructions to scale to a bigger stage than we might realistically assist, given our two main merchandise in growth – Future and Marathon.  “

Based on Parsons, the corporate’s “speedy growth ran headlong right into a broad financial slowdown.” He mentions the “high quality miss” of Future 2’s Lightfall expansions together with the necessity to give each The Last Form and Marathon extra time to prepare dinner.

“We had been overly bold, our monetary security margins had been subsequently exceeded, and we started working within the crimson,” Parson’s mentioned.

Parsons declare Bungie and Sony did every little thing potential to keep away from this consequence. Again in October of 2023 Bungie laid of 100 of its employees.

“Bungie will proceed to make nice video games. We nonetheless have over 850 staff members constructing Future and Marathon, and we are going to proceed to construct wonderful experiences that exceed our gamers’ expectations,” Parsons said.

Bungie has seemingly been in bother for fairly a while now, however the points plaguing the corporate seem to have worsened since Sony acquired it. In December of 2023, IGN printed an article describing a Bungie affected by a “soul-crushing” environment and there have been issues that Sony would utterly take over the corporate.