Andy Chalk
·4 min read
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It hasn't been a good couple weeks for Bungie. At the end of July, the Destiny 2 studio laid off 220 employees, representing roughly 17% of its total workforce; shortly after that, a report surfaced alleging that Bungie CEO Pete Parsons had spent more than $2.4 million on vintage cars over the past two years; and shortly after that it came to light that hopes of avoiding layoffs by really nailing The Final Shape expansion were completely misplaced, because the cuts were reportedly planned regardless of the expansion's outcome.
Bungie is under pressure from Sony to get its house in order, but it seems increasingly unable to. Parsons acknowledged when the most recent round of layoffs landed that the studio was overextended on various "incubation projects" and was bleeding money as a result, but it's unclear how it's going to pull out of that spiral. The Final Shape is intended to be the final Destiny 2 expansion, but the nigh-inevitable Destiny 3 is still a long way out, and Marathon, presumably the studio's next big thing, is struggling: The game recently underwent a leadership change, and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said in a recent Friends Per Second podcast that he's been told the current state of development is "not great."
"There's a reason that it was planned for this year and slipped a whole year," Schreier said. "People that I've talked to are a little pessimistic about it even hitting its current planned deadline, but we'll see. I don't know exactly when that is—sometime in 2025, I'm not sure. I mean, the sentiment I've heard is not great around it. At least as of a few months ago."
Bungie's future has never looked as shaky as it does right now, and the Destiny community is understandably down about the whole thing. It's not as though Sony is about to pull the plug on Destiny 2—you don't kill the golden goose you paid $3.6 billion for just a couple years ago—but the future of the series, and the studio that makes it, is a big ol' question mark right now.
In a recent post on Reddit, the Destiny 2 team acknowledged those concerns and promised to address them in the near future.
"We know that recent changes at Bungie have created uncertainty surrounding the future of Destiny," the team wrote. "Rest assured we remain committed to Destiny, to supporting our community with transparency, and to delivering regular updates about the game.
"We'll be talking with you all about the future of Destiny and plans for our next multi-year journey soon. Once we plant a flag for the date, we'll let you all know."
The message hasn't exactly inspired a wave of confidence. This is hardly the first time Bungie has approached its players with a "trust us" and a promise to do better after whiffing in one way or another, and after multiple rounds of layoffs at what by all measures should be a successful, money-making game studio, company leadership—particularly Parsons, Bungie's CEO—is facing an open revolt among its players.
"The only reason we're here in the first place is that leadership once again fumbled the bag and mismanaged things to the point that many talented developers who absolutely cooked on TFS had to be laid off," redditor shieldoversword wrote. "I want to see leadership take some accountability and generally have a new plan for management that will be able to sustainably keep all of the devs that make this game great. The rest will fall into place."
The latest This Week in Destiny update, which resumed this week after taking last week off to accommodate the layoffs, says Bungie remains "dedicated to supporting our community with transparency and delivering regular updates about the game"—a nearly verbatim repeat of what it said in the Reddit post—and that "all of our previously communicated game content plans remain unchanged."
"The recent changes within Bungie will present challenges that we’ll need to work through, so please pardon our dust over the next few weeks. We may experience a few bumps here and there, but our teams are committed to keeping you in the loop and hearing what you have to say."
Right now, though, I think the bigger concern for Destiny fans is hearing what Bungie has to say.
