Former Bungie Employee Claims Studio Confronted Insolvency With out Sony Acquisition – Report

Bungie misrepresented its funds and had considerably overextended itself when Sony acquired the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022, former staff claimed in a brand new Sport File report printed within the wake of Wednesday’s layoffs.

It was apparently unHealthy sufficient that a minimum of one supply described as a “well-connected former employee” went as far as to assert that Bungie confronted dire penalties if the acquisition hadn’t occurred, saying that the “alternate historical past is insolvency.”

Their feedback paint the image of a studio that was struggling regardless of the success of Future and Future 2 attributable to supporting too many tasks and different issues. Following the Sony acquisition, Sport File’s sources declare Bungie repeatedly missed its monetary targets, resulting in roughly 100 staff being laid off in November 2023.

A second spherical of layoffs adopted on Wednesday, impacting one other 220 folks, or 17 % of the studio’s workforce, with one other 155 being built-in elsewhere in Sony Interactive Leisure. Bungie can also be spinning out considered one of its incubation tasks to kind a brand new studio underneath the PlayStation banner.

Inside Bungie, the layoffs had been anticipated for a while. In December 2023, IGN reported that the sensation throughout the studio was that it confronted extra reductions if The Closing Form did not do properly. However in response to Sport File’s supply, even The Closing Form being a serious blockbuster success could not have stopped the layoffs. Certainly, with Future 2 on the wane some seven years after its unique launch, The Closing Form reportedly did not outsell the earlier enlargement, Lightfall, regardless of being a essential success.

Former Bungie staff and different members of the video Games Business have been vocal within the wake of the layoffs, with lots of them blaming the studio’s management led by CEO Pete Parsons. Their sentiments have been echoed by these in Sport File’s report, claiming that Bungie “bought issues they have been simply not in a position to ship.” Parsons, for his half, blamed the cuts on the rising prices of growth and “enduring financial circumstances,” confirming that the studio had been “operating within the crimson” following delays to The Closing Form and Marathon.

Bungie is much from alone in being hit with layoffs, with different publishers together with EA, Xbox, Riot, and others additionally introducing cutbacks in what has been a troublesome yr for the video Games Business. For now, it’s going to proceed to focus its efforts completely on Future and the upcoming Marathon, which doesn’t have a launch date and is at the moment set for a while in 2025.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s Information Director in addition to co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Ship her a DM at @the_katbot.