Bungie Devs Say Atmosphere Is ‘Soul-Crushing’ Amid Layoffs, Cuts, and Fear of Total Sony Takeover

"While the exact details of Sony’s deal to acquire Bungie remain unknown to the public or employees, sources say they were told by leaders that the current split board structure is contingent on Bungie meeting certain financial goals. If Bungie falls short of its revenue goals by too great an amount, Sony is allowed to dissolve the existing board and take full control of the company. And with Destiny 2 expansion The Final Shape delayed into the next fiscal year and Bungie still investing heavily on Marathon, many employees understand that Bungie is struggling to meet the necessary targets to keep its last vestige of freedom. Such a takeover wouldn’t necessarily be shocking given its 2022 acquisition, but it would nevertheless be a stunning development for a company that has historically prided itself on its independence.

It was with this threat looming that Bungie leadership - not Sony, according to Parsons - made the choice to lay off roughly 100 employees last month. But the cost-cutting at Bungie isn’t limited to just personnel. Multiple current employees confirmed to IGN that the company has implemented numerous other cost-cutting measures recently, including a studio-wide hiring freeze, reduced travel budgets, elimination of holiday bonuses, keeping its annual Bungie Day virtual, delaying its weeklong company “Pentathalon” event to next December, and reducing numerous morale events such as cooking and knitting classes from monthly to quarterly. Bungie is also pausing or fully ending benefits like annual employee compensation adjustments to meet market rates, its new hire lunch program, employee donation matching, its peer recognition program, and gift cards for employees birthdays. And yearly studio performance bonuses this year will only be the contractually obligated 80% minimum, after being above 100% for good performance several previous years running."

In short, Bungie's ability to control their future is dependent on their revenue continuing.  

Seeing the extreme measures Bungie is taking to ensure their independence, makes me hope Sony does eventually take over. With a hiring freeze, I wouldn't be surprised if devs are already looking elsewhere to work. It's not like they're getting a holiday bonus anyway now.

Bungie's leadership has been terrible ever since they moved into the AAA space. Halo CE had a painful development and Halo 2 even more so. Halo 3, funny enough, had the smoothest development cycle because Bungie leadership literally left leaving the actual developers to lead development on the game.

I hope everything turns out well for the devs sake, but seeing where longtime Bungie leadership is taking the studio, I doubt it's going to get any better without intervention.

Sounds like Bungie leadership is making life harder for everyone.

I'm not sure if Sony taking over is necessarily better, but work culture in a few of their studios seems to be very positive.

Sad to say that's not anything new. 

Very reasonable I would say. And most of those cuts are more on the unnecessary than needed costs so cutting them to keep cashflow on target and keep their independence seem very good. Also not to forget a lot of "startups" with culture of this type of expenses have changed over time to be more in line with more mature companies.

Yea I loved it. So glad I went for the plat because you get a great weapon at the end of the game but you're so used to your combination by that point that I never used it. During the trials though I understood better how it worked and it was so damn satisfying clearing a whole screen in one shot. Some games seriously underestimate how great it can feel to be OP in a game (if done right of course) you don't want to be OP from the start. 

FFXVI is a weird one to me. Half of the game is an 11/10, the other half is a 5/10. Wonder if we can get some PC mod that trims all the fat, especially in the second half. Make it more of a 20-25 hour hack'n'slash experience.

I didn't do many side quests by the way, do you did them guys ?

I did them all for the plat. Literally just skipped all conversations minus the few good ones that really added to the story.

I wanted to know if you did them all, is the game became too easy or it is still challenging ?