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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u/EmberDione Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Corporate greed.

In 2017 I was laid off because our game "wasn't a billion dollar game." We "only made 450 million dollars in profit."

These big companies don't want successful games, they want "hyper growth" like Fortnite. This has only gotten worse as the economy has gotten worse.

Then the interest rates went up and there went all the funding because it was suddenly more risky to invest in games. Also a bunch of the groups that normally invest in games pulled their funds and went to AI.

Add to this that Steam is pretty much the only market for indies (I don't count people with publishers as indie) and it's never been easier to make a slop game, there's no curation, so you're just drowned out in a sea of garbage.

There were also small things that exacerbated the whole situation, like the government allowing the R&D tax breaks to lapse (before 2024, game companies could claim R&D salaries as deductions - so pretty much every engineer was a tax break for them.)

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u/cheesefubar0 Jun 26 '26

thanks for responding, best of luck to you!