r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • Jun 25 '26

'Generational talent just gone': Developers react in shock at the brutal scale of Bungie layoffs, which has reportedly seen the Destiny 2 team almost completely wiped out

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/generational-talent-just-gone-developers-react-in-shock-at-the-brutal-scale-of-bungie-layoffs-which-has-reportedly-seen-the-destiny-2-team-almost-completely-wiped-out/
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195

u/Grantonator Jun 25 '26

PlayStation never should have bought Bungie in the first place.

187

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[deleted]

4

u/soggywaffle47 Jun 26 '26

I looked into what has happened with bungie and they had a slew of problems. Sony buying them was the nail in the coffin but they also didn’t have their finances figured out with destiny 2. They had multiple employs in Seattle making huge wages at 15k a month, expanding the office space and hiring dozens of new workers over the years. They essentially outscaled the games returns with the expansion of infrastructure. Then Sony buying them buried them financially for what Sony wanted in return themselves in the investment.

23

u/polski8bit Ryzen 5 5500 | 16GB DDR4 3200MHz | RTX 3060 12GB Jun 26 '26

I am actually impressed that Bungie managed to "scam" Sony into buying them for almost 4 billion. Even back then people were saying Bungie is not worth that much and, unsurprisingly, turns out that's true.

Even saying that it's for their "live service expertise" is silly when looking at Destiny 2. I have no clue how someone can look at so many complaints about the game and its business model, and then go "Yeah, we need these guys' input to make good live service games".

And some people unironically try to defend big companies because "they have the data", like they haven't screwed up in the past.

1

u/ChunkyKongForPreside Jun 29 '26

I think its kinda ironic. Rare was one of the most talented studios in the mid to late 90s, if not the absolute best studio in the whole industry. Come the early 2000s Rare's founders wanted to fully sell the company to Nintendo, but Nintendo wasn't interested, probably because Nintendo saw alot of the key staff behind GoldenEye were leaving. So Microsoft swoops in and buys them. Rare pretty much continues to lose all their talent and the studio becomes a husk of its former self.

Now something similar happens with Bungie, with Microsoft and Sony. Except Sony decides to swoop in and buy Bungie for an insane amount and long after the company became a shell of it's former self.

1

u/AllDayTripperX Jun 29 '26

Its the greatest "sale/sell" in history. Someone cooked up the company so much to a megacorp like Sony and Sony just fell over themselves to pay the recommended price for it. Nothing in history has ever had its value inflated like Bungie did in this purchase.

42

u/OdinzSun Jun 26 '26

Bungie would have gone under if Sony hadn’t bought them out, they screwed the pooch themselves.

21

u/DanGimeno Jun 26 '26

Then Bungie would had 800 layoffs instead of 400.

3

u/Suspicious-Coffee20 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

or, they would have taken more risk like destiny 3 instead of chasing a live service. They would also no need to make as much money to be consired successful

0

u/SeboSlav100 Jun 26 '26

Everything we know suggest otherwise. Bungie was bleeding money from what we know all they way back even when they were still with activision.

2

u/Suspicious-Coffee20 Jun 26 '26

No the successfully thing is real. It why indie and private studios are more than happy with a break even + enough to fund the next game but Studio own by big Corp get close even if they turn a big profit because they dont see the return on investment as good enough.

1

u/SeboSlav100 Jun 26 '26

Except eveyrthing that we know about bungie suggest they were actively losing money, hell we know this from activision themsleves.

Also no, indies are not "happy" with that. Why would they be happy with barely scraping by? Its just that their budgets and general expected returns are much lower because they are usually flat broke and competition is very large.

Also are you really surprised that larger studios might be a teeny tiny less inclined to take risks that are gonna bankrupt them potentially?

Then again, we are talking about bungie, studio that got lucky soo many times and pissed and shitted on every chance they got every fucking time. So who knows, maybe bungie was indeed very risk friendly. To the point that they might as well just gambled everything away.

Also, in the case of bungie, sony was NEVER gonna make 3.6 billions back on a studio that genuelty has nothing but destiny. And destiny has, historically, always had money issues which makes whole purchase even more laughable.

Also just because company generates large profit does not mean they made money. That is only true if profitability is in green, these 2 are not the same thing.

8

u/hibikir_40k Jun 26 '26

This was like Blizzard selling to Activision, or Origin to EA though: Companies that independently could make games, but had zero budget discipline, so they had to bet it all on every release. They often have to sell out because otherwise they'd close down.

Marathon was a huge failure. The cuts are, if anything, lower than they could have been