What you need to know
- Destiny and Marathon developer Bungie is laying off 220 employees, with almost another 200 moving into new roles across PlayStation.
- According to a report from Bloomberg, this comes weeks after Bungie canceled a Destiny spinoff game codenamed Payback.
- Payback was reportedly a third-person game with inspiration taken from games like Genshin Impact.
- Bungie is also reportedly scaling back future Destiny 2 support, with smaller updates planned instead of big paid expansions.
Bungie stopped work on a big Destiny spinoff weeks ago.
That's according to a report from Bloomberg, detailing some of the conditions at Sony-owned Bungie that led to the layoff of 220 employees, with an additional 200 or so moving into new roles across PlayStation. Per the report, while Bungie was continuing development on Destiny 2 expansions and its upcoming extraction shooter Marathon, the studio was working on a number of smaller projects, including remakes of older games and a mobile version of Destiny.
The biggest of these side projects was codenamed Payback. Designed as a third-person Destiny spinoff, Payback was inspired by other games such as MiHoYo's Genshin Impact. Payback was reportedly canceled two months ago, with the majority of the development staff now on Marathon, which is currently slated to launch in 2025 across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.
Looking ahead, Bungie is reportedly moving away from crafting big expansions for Destiny 2, as sales have been declining each year, even with 2024's critically acclaimed Destiny 2: The Final Shape. The report indicates that Bungie is not looking to begin work on Destiny 3, but instead improve the process by which newer players can easily jump into Destiny 2.
Analysis: What a mess
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With projects canceled and Bungie essentially down by a third of its staff following two rounds of layoffs — another 100 employees were let go back in October 2023 — it's clear that the company needs a big win. With a huge amount of its resources now on Marathon, I truly hope that game can deliver.
Even if it does though, for things to get back on track will require a leadership change. It's possible we'll see Sony eventually assume full control of Bungie, but if this happens, I'm not sure how the company can be expected to run, considering one of the big ideas behind the $3.6 billion acquisition was for Bungie to provide live-service expertise on Sony's upcoming swath of games-as-a-service titles.
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