Sony Announces Layoffs at Bungie Amid Destiny 2 Underperformance

There are bad things happening over at Bungie. Sony just announced a major round of layoffs, primarily impacting the team behind the Destiny franchise. We don't know many employees were impacted, only that it was a "significant number."

Sony says it "explored multiple alternatives before concluding that a reduction was necessary to align the studio's resources with its current priorities and long-term goals." This comes directly after the final content update for Destiny 2, and was likely already in the works before that. We learned via Bloomberg's reporting back in May that developers weren't working on Destiny 3 and that Bungie layoffs were likely forthcoming.

This decision has also impacted some members of the Marathon team, though that game is still getting content updates. Sony says the remaining team will be working on Marathon alongside "incubation efforts for future projects." There have even been reductions across Sony's gaming division, primarily impacting folks working alongside Destiny and Marathon devs.

These cuts go to the very top. Bungie studio head Justin Truman is stepping down, according to Bloomberg. It's no secret that Sony hasn't been pleased with Destiny 2's financials, with the company saying last year that the game's "sales and user engagement have not reached the expectations" it counted on when the electronics giant purchased Bungie.