Destiny Developer Bungie Will Reportedly Lay Off A ‘Significant Number’ Of People

Bungie, the PlayStation studio behind Destiny, is planning a “significant number” of layoffs, according to Bloomberg. The report came shortly after the studio announced that it was ending active development on Destiny 2 to start working on its next games. Bloomberg says, however, that Bungie doesn’t have any new projects lined up, and it doesn’t plan to immediately start working on Destiny 3. 

The studio will instead focus on its latest game Marathon, its first-person shooter that came out in March, perhaps in an effort to develop the kind of features and updates that would get more players to sign up. Marathon didn’t perform quite as well as Sony had hoped, and it had led to a $560 million loss for the company for the quarter that ended after the game came out. Bungie had already moved some Destiny staff to the Marathon team in recent months, which signals that it’s putting more resources into the struggling game.

It’s not quite clear if Bungie has solid plans for Destiny 3 at this point, or if it’s possible that the game wouldn’t happen at all. Staff members have reportedly been pitching new projects, including titles for the Destiny franchise, but Sony hasn’t approved any of them. For now, fans can still look forward to Destiny 2’s last live service update, Monument of Triumph, which will be rolling out on June 9. The studio plans to keep the game’s servers online and to keep it playable for years to come, but as IGN notes, fans are worried about the possibility of Sony shutting down the studio completely like it did Bluepoint. If you’ll recall, Bluepoint was a first-party studio behind a lot of PlayStation remakes and had even wanted to work on Bloodborne before it was shuttered.

Sony purchased Bungie in 2022 for $3.6 billion, a few years after the studio released Destiny 2. Shortly after Sony’s acquisition was finalized, the company laid off staffers and delayed the release of Marathon and the expansion Bungie was working on for Destiny 2 back then. Destiny was once one of the most popular online games out there, but its sequel didn’t quite meet Sony’s expectations after it acquired the studio.