In the wake of hundreds of job losses the majority of Bungie staff seem to blaming CEO Pete Parsons, rather than Sony.
It’d be wrong to say that the 220 job layoffs at Bungie were a surprise announcement on Wednesday but, sadly, it’s something that has been predicted for a long time, especially given the cuts at most other Western studios over the past few years.
Only two years ago Sony bought Bungie for $3.6 billion and yet almost immediately there were reports of Sony being dissatisfied with Bungie management and declining numbers for Destiny 2.
Things seemed to get better with the release of expansion The Final Shape but that didn’t stop the layoffs and one insider now predicts that the end result of the current turmoil will be Bungie losing its autonomy entirely.
There’s thankfully no talk of Bungie being shut down, but according to rumourmonger Jeff Grubb, ‘Hermen Hulst runs Bungie now.’ Hulst was previously president of SIE Worldwide Studios and is now join-CEO of the whole of PlayStation.
There’s no suggestion he will be more personally involved than he already is, but that, more generally, Sony will take direct control of the studio, with 155 developers already confirmed to be moving from Bungie to work solely for Sony Interactive Entertainment in a new team.
Grubb was initially asked whether he thought Bungie was still going to publish their games independently and operate separately from the rest of Sony, as they currently do.
‘I’ll put it as far as I know, which isn’t everything by a long shot: In time, Bungie will lose its autonomy and will become like any other PlayStation Worldwide Studio under SIE and Herman Hulst,’ said Grubb on Twitter.
Whether this means that future Bungie titles will become PlayStation console exclusives is unclear but at the moment upcoming title Marathon is still scheduled for Xbox Series X/S.
Elsewhere on Twitter, current and former Bungie staff are aiming their vitriol, not at Sony, but at Bungie management, in particular CEO Pete Parsons.
Bungie management has been criticised for some time now – long before Sony bought the company – with former global social media lead Griffin Bennett, stating simply: ‘Step down, Pete.’
Former Destiny 2 community manager Liana Ruppert agreed that ‘Pete is a joke’, before adding: ‘You are a liar, a thief, and so many things we can’t discuss publicly. STEP DOWN and WITHOUT the giant Sony payout. This isn’t on Sony, this is squarely on the failure of leadership. Plain and simple.’
Naturally, those still at Bungie were more hesitant to criticise Parsons publicly but respected content creator Lore Daddy insisted that, ‘Leadership needs to be changed. Their decisions have consistently led to disaster for everyone who has actually been making the games we play.
‘They’ve been reckless with the studio, its employees, and its franchises. The problem is clear. Bad leadership. It needs to change.’
In the hours since the announcement, the fact that Parsons has spent over $2.3 million (£1.8 million) on classic cars, since the acquisition by Sony, has angered many both inside the company and further afield.
Given the long-standing public criticism of Bungie’s leadership it’s somewhat puzzling why Sony bought the studio in the first place, but at the time they stated it was because of their intention to expand their range of live service titles.
That’s why they were happy to absorb some staff into Sony Interactive Entertainment, rather than also lay them off, and it wouldn’t be surprising if that wasn’t the last time that happens.
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