Bungie lays off 17% of their workforce (155 employees moving to SIE)

[Vertigo]

Because its a solid sci fi shooter. You mention platforming, story and graphics but what makes it better than most is the good gunplay for a sci fi shooter.

Theres not many games doing what it does with. Lots of story, strikes, raids, missions all while coop with good gunplay. Plus PVP.
The raids have been some of the best things in gameplay for me. The story is subjective and isn't fantastic but definitely no worse than most the crap you get out there.

It’s kinda also the ONLY sci-fi shooter. It occupies a space once dominated by Mass Effect and Halo. Now it’s kinda just Destiny year after year.

The game is amazing (at times and kinda exclusively in endgame). But they clearly cannot sustain current operations or production.

I don’t think they need to? The way they did things for the last 4 years is clearly done with and also exhausted its viability. For whatever reason… it became even more expensive to make.

To sell to the same amount of Lightfall while burning money with 6 months extra dev time and delays.

I don’t think it’s the amounts of content. A new gimmick does the job sometime and it can be a small idea. For instance I would like to see some gimmicks from Exoprimal make their way in one half of the year. There was some more interesting pve activities thrown to players only seen when they were leveled enough. This idea would work better in a matured game like Destiny. Exoprimal stans recognize this even tho the game was kind mid to trash.

The problem is fans taking the dramatic angle for effect. Logically tho… you take a look back and see the forthcoming slaughter telegraphed Friday… I think Sony and Bungie are taking the correct actions to mitigate the harm already done and prepare for the future… and hopefully a better one.

I feel bad for layoffs but that’s not my concern and won’t ever be vs the ongoing health of the studio as a whole. You want to feed more families in the future? Make the company better, keep operations going and sell more product. I see it in my own field, guys get laid off weekly and everyone is looking to bury everyone. Times are rough and good luck to everyone.

Edit: it is now revealed that original marathon director Christopher Barrett left Bungie in April. He was replaced by Valorant’s Joe Ziegler the year before. I don’t know the terms of his departure as I think personal issues may have been a factor that I won’t mention out of respect.

Although, according to Jason, the replacement of Barret on Marathon, Blackburn leaving Destiny replaced with 20 plus year vet Tyson Greene… and the Sony restructure of leadership are all correlated. A new guard was introduced for cause i assume. We should remember that the reports indicated that Sony wanted Bungie to focus on their primary money maker meanwhile Bungie used Destiny revenues to incubate like 5 game and divert resources. This seems to be the changes made. To only focus on active games or those closer to shipping.

PS - kinda glad the warframe and genshin inspired hero shooter spin off was cancelled tbh. I’d play it just because… but ain’t nobody asking for that shit

Edit # 100:

Bungie has just opened up 6 job positions for Marathon and Destiny

 

[Bryank75]

 

[Would_you_kindly]

'peter piss pants'

 

[Vertigo]

What’s funny is this happens days after some report Destiny was in the top 5 moneymakers in June and instead losing the ability to spin good pr. The source is suspect to me however as I have not heard of it before. I’ll share if I find it again.

Anecdotal PS chart info for the week. Not doing to great on revenue charting below mlb the show and ZZZ but above Apex, Genshin Helldivers. Engagement info puts Destiny as the 5th most downloaded game on psn behind College Football 25 (was on sale last week?) It does not chart in the top 10 in your country. Steam performance has been shit these last few weeks and will continue to be for the next 3 weeks for certain now with community sentiments hurting it from outside the game. It’s the waiting for act 3 structure… stupid

Unfortunately I do not think anyone has determined when these charts refresh. Every 24hrs? 3 days? Each week?

Which makes you think if Destiny would even need to risk scope reduction had they not pissed away money on unrelated and fruitless endeavors. Like how in the f**k could you risk so much money on all these other games or buy a new giant building and set up that Amsterdam office. It’s never good when any of these companies grow like this cuz look here comes post Covid inflation, civil unrest and wars everywhere. Yay.

I used to say this was the reason cyberpunk turned out the way it did. The success of Witcher 3 grew CDPr too fast and gassed their heads. Bungie did the same stupid shit

Bungie’s value is sorta its history of mistakes too. From recalls days before a boxed launch, halo 2’s entire development, and everything about every Destiny release. This is another major one

 

[Yurinka]

Seems some of these Destiny fans aren't happy with him.

What’s funny is this happens days after some report Destiny was in the top 5 moneymakers in June and instead losing the ability to spin good pr.

Well, the Bungie message already mentions that TFS has been very successful and isn't the reason behind losing a third of their manpower.

They mention it's more related to Lightfal's underperformance to the point of putting the studio in the red because they were overspending and overhiring for what they achieved with it.

Yes, they could have used the more recent TFS success to edulcorate the changes, but when you're losing a third of your manpower in a day it's hard to hide that something is wrong there and is better to be honest and let them the people know the real info than to let them believe rumors and stories from fired people that in many cases will be worse than the reality.

I personally think it's better to be honest because helps to understand why they did it and see that it was needed. If they would say "hey, were doing great with TFS but we'll going to kick a third of our manpower" would sound extremely weird and people would get even more mad with them.

We should remember that the reports indicated that Sony wanted Bungie to focus on their primary money maker meanwhile Bungie used Destiny revenues to incubate like 5 game and divert resources. This seems to be the changes made. To only focus on active games or those closer to shipping.

Well, if you run a company and have loses what you have to do is to reduce costs and pump your money maker and products close to release to reduce the loses as much as possible and go back to profitability as much as possible.

It isn't the time to invest a lot of money in many long term projects. To invest a lot in many long term projects makes more sense when you are very profitable and have money to afford it.

I assume originally Sony was more open with having loses while they were working in more projects, but at some point Totoki saw the SIE profitability challenges, and Bungie in particular, with the 2022 and 2023 results and decided to be more strict and cut the fat (fire less productive people, shut down less promising projects and studios at SIE).

I assume SIE's idea was to improve profitability in the short and mid term, to save money on a per studio basis and reinvest it later -once they have it- to fund projects, making their teams more consicious about profitability and less dependent on Sony's funding.

I assume that as CFO Totoki doesn't want to have teams who burn hundreds of millions per project not giving a fuck about profitability and delivery dates.

 

[quest4441]

While funny this type of behaviour is generally seen from pissy whiners, they get mad when people who own stock earn millions of dollars and spend their own money but never have the guts to go open their own studio and make games. 99.99% of the new studios that pop up with "From the makers of......" moniker fail so I guess they are not that "talented" and being held back by the suits as they say they are.

 

[quest4441]

I also don't understand this weird obsession in games industry of the customers crusading/feeling outraged on behalf of the employees. No one cares if Honda lays off workers, People still go buy a honda. Its weird feeling outraged on behalf of unknown people losing jobs and you would be better off putting more thought into the ingredients of your next meal than some john smith getting laid off.

 

[John Elden Ring]

Source:
https://www.irwebmeeting.com/sony/fast/20240807/sA7GHnQS/202503_1q_02_en/index.html

Sony President, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki gave some details on the restructuring of Bungie!

- Purpose is cost restructure and portfolio optimization
- "We have to enhance efficiency of the business"
- Bungie back office functions will be integrated into SIE
- Bungie head count and resources will be concentrated into Destiny 2 and Marathon
- Other title development at Bungie will be transferred to PlayStation Studios
- Optimize overall studio structure

 

[Would_you_kindly]

Source:
https://www.irwebmeeting.com/sony/fast/20240807/sA7GHnQS/202503_1q_02_en/index.html

Sony President, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki gave some details on the restructuring of Bungie!

- Purpose is cost restructure and portfolio optimization
- "We have to enhance efficiency of the business"
- Bungie back office functions will be integrated into SIE
- Bungie head count and resources will be concentrated into Destiny 2 and Marathon
- Other title development at Bungie will be transferred to PlayStation Studios
- Optimize overall studio structure

Worst purchase / waste of money in Sony's history

 

[John Elden Ring]

Worst purchase / waste of money in Sony's history

Best FPS makers on the market, they clearly bought them to make GaaS titles.

 

[Would_you_kindly]

Best FPS makers on the market, they clearly bought them to make GaaS titles.

In your opinion , I personally think id software is the best FPS maker in the business & Microsoft got them along with a bunch of other studios & a treasure chest of IPs for a much better price than what Sony overspent on bungie so we could have destiny , destiny & more destiny (oh & marathon that looks shite)

 

[TrishaCat]

>people lose jobs
>"this is good news!" posts
Why are you like this

 

[Remember_Spinal]

People love the drama more than they hate the layoffs.

There have been over 10,000 game industry layoffs this year and half of them don’t generate the same level of interest as Bungie or some other companies.

89 Days Into 2024 And 8,800+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced

PlayStation, Sega, and Microsoft are the latest companies to announce cuts

kotaku.com

Both epic and riot laid off close to 1000 people each and barely got news stories much less multi week episodes about them.

 

[Petekilla]

 

[Yurinka]

Totoki's transcription of what he said in the Q&A of the fiscal report presentation trying to fix a bit the atrocious English of the translator (let's hope they replace her):

https://www.irwebmeeting.com/sony/fast/20240807/sA7GHnQS/202503_1q_02_en/index.html

"Q: I have a question about G&NS: You conducted the restructuring for the exercise for studios of this group, managemement, project development, etc. during Q4, now we're in August. What kind of restructuring are you going to conduct, what is your plan for that?

A: At this moment Bungie's restructuring has been already announced. And at this moment, as you correctly pointed out, for this restructuring the purpose is cost restructure and portfolio optimization. These are the purposes.

And simultaneously we have enhanced the efficiency of the business, so back office functions should be integrated with the studios of SIE. So Bungie itself, as it is considered, Destiny 2 and new live service Marathon title. The headcount and resources and functions will be concentrated there *. High quality and wonderful games and game experiences should be developed, so we'd like to concentrate resources and functions there.

Other than that, and other types of development, title development, will be transfered to PS Studios group. There will be some reallocation of the resources. So in any case, the organization structure will be changed, so we'd like to optimize our overall studio structure."

* = I assume that with that sentence he meant "We have considered that Bungie resources and functions will be concentrated on Destiny 2 and the new live service title Marathon"

Another stupid dumb take from Colin, he has no idea.

Bungie had only one project live nearing sunseting and in addition to post launch support for this game they were working on multiple projects more, so obviously were in the red because AAA games/movies/etc under development still not published cost a lot of money but still don't produce revenue.

This is a long term bet: now they have only a game in the market and their plan in the future they'll have more games at the same time plus non gaming adaptations, so in the future they'll make more money than now, but at the expenses of sacrificing profitability during that transition period.

Since they self publish, Bungie also had many back office functions (marketing, customer support, legal, finances, HR, servers, IT, sales & distributions of physical...) that now are redundant when acquired by Sony because SIE already handles them for their game and studios. So to optimize their profitability they could be integrated within the SIE group and or be removed because they had people at SIE working on that for all their teams.

Sony obviously already knew all these things when they acquired Bungie and were fine with it. So as usual in acquisitions, some redundancy and fat was going to be cut.

Lightfall heavily underperformed, so some people took responsability and got fired. They did some changes and improvements, and The Final Shape was a big success. They continue working on Marathon normally and moved the incubated project to PS Studios to further reduce costs at Bungie.

Bungie also joined SIE publishing and PS Studios management and dev teams in the Live Service Center of Excellence where they did help improve the live services part of other SIE liveservice games, and so far Gran Turismo 7, MLB and Helldivers 2 achieved a great success.

What happened until now is normal and outside Lightfall underperforming pretty likely were things both Sony and Bungie heads knew were going to happen. Acquisitions aren't a failure because the first year after the acquisition the acquired studio is in the red, that's dumb. Acquisitions are a long term bet, its results are seen 5-10 years or beyond. Even if in this case they already got good results with TFS release, Marathon announcement and helping the other GaaS teams.

 

[Kokoloko]

Another dumb take from Colin, he has no idea.

Yeah I like Colins Podcast at times ( havent listened to it years really ) but he comes out with some dumb shit sometimes.

I stopped listening frequently when he was so “confused” by what PS4 Pro was, every week he’s yap about it. What is it, Cerny did such a bad job, blah blah blah. And then Xbox 1 X got announced and he was like this is clear and a great move by MS….

I was like yeah…. Im out.

He’s said a few things, that made me think he has no idea.
At least he wasnt dumb enough to think Gamepass would work lol

Marathon will come out, it will do well and all this shit will be forgotten.

Hopefully Sony manages Bungie better.
Bungie trying to developer all those games off from just Destiny 2 DLC profits…its not rocket science to know that will probably not work out well

 

[Vertigo]

Totoki's transcription of what he said in the Q&A of the fiscal report presentation trying to fix a bit the atrocious English of the translator (let's hope they replace her):

https://www.irwebmeeting.com/sony/fast/20240807/sA7GHnQS/202503_1q_02_en/index.html

"Q: I have a question about G&NS: You conducted the restructuring for the exercise for studios of this group, managemement, project development, etc. during Q4, now we're in August. What kind of restructuring are you going to conduct, what is your plan for that?

A: At this moment Bungie's restructuring has been already announced. And at this moment, as you correctly pointed out, for this restructuring the purpose is cost restructure and portfolio optimization. These are the purposes.

And simultaneously we have enhanced the efficiency of the business, so back office functions should be integrated with the studios of SIE. So Bungie itself, as it is considered, Destiny 2 and new live service Marathon title. The headcount and resources and functions will be concentrated there *. High quality and wonderful games and game experiences should be developed, so we'd like to concentrate resources and functions there.

Other than that, and other types of development, title development, will be transfered to PS Studios group. There will be some reallocation of the resources. So in any case, the organization structure will be changed, so we'd like to optimize our overall studio structure."

* = I assume that with that sentence he meant "We have considered that Bungie resources and functions will be concentrated on Destiny 2 and the new live service title Marathon"


Another stupid dumb take from Colin, he has no idea.

Bungie had only one project live nearing sunseting and in addition to post launch support for this game they were working on multiple projects more, so obviously were in the red because AAA games/movies/etc under development still not published cost a lot of money but still don't produce revenue.

This is a long term bet: now they have only a game in the market and their plan in the future they'll have more games at the same time plus non gaming adaptations, so in the future they'll make more money than now, but at the expenses of sacrificing profitability during that transition period.

Since they self publish, Bungie also had many back office functions (marketing, customer support, legal, finances, HR, servers, IT, sales & distributions of physical...) that now are redundant when acquired by Sony because SIE already handles them for their game and studios. So to optimize their profitability they could be integrated within the SIE group and or be removed because they had people at SIE working on that for all their teams.

Sony obviously already knew all these things when they acquired Bungie and were fine with it. So as usual in acquisitions, some redundancy and fat was going to be cut.

Lightfall heavily underperformed, so some people took responsability and got fired. They did some changes and improvements, and The Final Shape was a big success. They continue working on Marathon normally and moved the incubated project to PS Studios to further reduce costs at Bungie.

Bungie also joined SIE publishing and PS Studios management and dev teams in the Live Service Center of Excellence where they did help improve the live services part of other SIE liveservice games, and so far Gran Turismo 7, MLB and Helldivers 2 achieved a great success.

What happened until now is normal and outside Lightfall underperforming pretty likely were things both Sony and Bungie heads knew were going to happen. Acquisitions aren't a failure because the first year after the acquisition the acquired studio is in the red, that's dumb. Acquisitions are a long term bet, its results are seen 5-10 years or beyond. Even if in this case they already got good results with TFS release, Marathon announcement and helping the other GaaS teams.

Lightfall sold well. Engagement for that year was worse. That’s separate from expansion unit sales in which it may be close to the best selling one if not best.

Engagement dip would be related to player sentiments and delayed release schedules. This is where they got hurt with revenues… losing players thru seasonal content.

 

[Yurinka]

Lightfall sold well. Engagement for that year was worse. That’s separate from expansion unit sales in which it may be close to the best selling one if not best.

Engagement dip would be related to player sentiments and delayed release schedules. This is where they got hurt with revenues… losing players thru seasonal content.

According Jason back in October when they did the previous layoff, Bungie was projecting that they were going to miss their studio yearly revenue target by 45%, which is a too big percentage. That was the year of Lightfall, so mostly means Lightfall didn't perform as they expected in terms of revenue.

But maybe still with this they sold a lot and made a lot of money, who knows. Maybe.

 

[Vertigo]

According Jason back in October when they did the previous layoff, Bungie was projecting that they were going to miss their studio yearly revenue target by 45%, which is a too big percentage. That was the year of Lightfall, so mostly means Lightfall didn't perform as they expected in terms of revenue.

But maybe still with this they sold a lot and made a lot of money, who knows. Maybe.

Bungie sells another 50-60 dollars worth of content after the expansion release. Lightfall sold well upon release but tanked engagement for the rest of the year due player sentiments entering an all time low during that time. As far as we know it’s the best selling expansion launch; we don’t have info on any ltd totals.

Less players thru the year could very well mean leas revenue from seasonal content. Less seasonal content sold. The revenue miss seems very much tied to player engagement thru the course of the year as there was a similar 30-40 percent drop in playerbase overall from the year before.

Seasonal content in Destiny is/was narrative and endgame content. Not just battle passes. Selling less of that thru the year on top of a 6 month product delay would clearly hurt their revenue streams. The new service model should try and address this to keep a steady playerbase and revenue stream through the year instead of front loaded with an expansion launch.

Considering Bungie had a planned layoff following TFS release is a bit wild tho. They’re going to be raking in those revenues while having laid off a good chunk of the workforce who made it. A bit dirty just to get out of the red on the books for the year.