Yesterday’s round of layoffs at Destiny 2 maker Bungie totaled around 100 people, or eight percent of its entire staff, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier said today the layoffs came after Bungie told its employees its expected revenue “was running 45 percent below projections for the year.”
Citing people who attended the meeting two weeks ago, Schreier said Bungie CEO Pete Parsons blamed the missed revenue projection on “weak player retention” for Destiny 2 after its disappointing Lightfall expansion was released in February.
Laid-off employees were said to have received three months of severance and three months of health insurance, but things like expense reimbursements ended on the same day the dozens of workers were let go.
Layoffs included well-known community managers and staff in multiple departments, such as art, player support, recruitment, legal, and QA, according to Forbes’ Paul Tassi.
As part of the layoffs, Schreier also reported yesterday that the upcoming Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, has been pushed out of its initial Feb. 27, 2024 release date and into June and out of Sony’s current fiscal year.
Lightfall was, by and large, panned by the game’s community, especially when it comes to the game’s expanding lore and story that’s supposed to wind to a close with The Final Shape. Many called Lightfall a filler DLC, with a storyline that didn’t move the plot forward enough and focused solely on the new Strand subclasses.
Several seasons have since expanded on the storyline and helped push the narrative toward The Final Shape, which is said to be “the end of the light and darkness saga” of Destiny 2, including a final battle with the franchise’s current big bad, The Witness.
This is the third Sony-owned studio to let go of employees in 2023. Bungie joins The Last of Us and Uncharted maker Naughty Dog and LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule as other studios to suffer layoffs.
