I would say the content is more the issue.

There's about 10 bad reviews that the Era poster shared that were talking about a lot of the same issues. 

It sounds like the people who helmed Firesprite immediately left, and terrible people replaced them. 

A few of the reviews sound pretty clear that it isn't "Sony" causing them issues. But rather Firesprite leadership/HR is causing issues. The teams are siloed, lacking experience, and Firesprite leadership doesn't want to be receptive.

They've already cancelled one of their projects, and it doesn't sound like there's a lot of faith in the others. A lot of people have left for other studios. 

Not intending to doompost, just sharing concerns. 

Yeah, I don't even put any blame on what's going on at Bungie on Sony either. Jason Jones was a notoriously terrible leader who straight up left his studio when Halo 3 went into development and you had a Composer, O'Donnell working on main parts of the game that it was a miracle that Halo 3 turned out as great as it did. People blamed Activision for how Destiny was turning out and praised when Bungie went independent but things weren't getting much better. In fact, worse in many ways.

Now with all these layoffs, especially clearing out any remaining employees that have been there for over 20 years, you can see it's still all the same upper management that has been there since the beginning. Even Halo CE had a terrible development cycle and that boiled over with Halo 2. 

I almost wanna joke that the Bungie execs pocketed most of that $1.2 billion that was meant to retain talent lol. 

Idk what the future holds with Bungie, but I think it's pretty clear they have their sights set on leaving Destiny once Marathon releases. Most likely Matter releases by that point as well so they're not reliant on Destiny revenue anymore.

To some extent I blame both.

I imagine that Sony cut funding. I absolutely can't imagine that they would be overseeing to make sure that specific people got laid off. That I have to imagine was on Bungie.

So looks like it did turn out to be Bungie calling the shots but......it somehow gets worse! So many Bungie employees will never see a dime from that buyout. 

Sounds like a shady private equity purchase, where they dangle the carrot for a bit but ultimately get rid of you before you get a payout on your stock shares.

Jesus.

That's even worse on Bungie than I thought. 

This looks so fucking shady from bungie leadership to get them dolars.

Michael is handling the situation as more of a class act than I ever would if I were in that same situation. He was no doubt royally screwed amongst those with unvested shares from the buyout. Especially as such a long time key contributor to Bungie since the 90s. 

Hats off to him for keeping it classy and respectful. 

Especially considering how those that were laid off found out. 

What a drop off in revenue! I knew Lightfall was poorly received, but I didn't think it was that bad. And The Final Shape was getting good but not great feedback either. So much for Destiny being a continuous gold mine for Sony. There's no way Marathon can get anywhere near as big as Destiny does because Destiny reaches a wide variety of players.