By now, you’ve probably already heard about thelatest wave of layoffsatSony-ownedDestiny 2developerBungie. Ina statementcalled ‘The New Path For Bungie’, CEO Pete Parsons announced that Bungie was restructuring to focus development efforts entirely on Destiny 2 and its upcoming reboot of Marathon. 220 roles, about 17 percent of the studio’s workforce, were eliminated, and 155 more roles will be integrated into Sony. Another unannounced sci-fi project will be spun out into a new studio within PlayStation.
There is no justification for mass layoffs like this in the industry, especially in a studio worth billions of dollars and owned by Sony, which itself is worth over $100 billion.
The post details that a series of bad management decisions forced Bungie to “scale to a larger level than we could realistically support”, and that in combination with 2023’s economic slowdown, “financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red”. According to Parsons, despite “exhaustive efforts undertaken across our leadership and product teams to resolve our financial challenges”, the layoffs could not be avoided.
Understandably, people within Bungie and the larger gaming industry are extremely angry. There is no justification for mass layoffs like this in the industry, especially in a studio worth billions of dollars and owned by Sony, which itself is worth over $100 billion. These layoffs come after Destiny’sThe Final Shape expansionturned out to be a critical and commercial success, and Bungie leadership assured developers that the Sony deal would not result in layoffs.
The most perplexing thing about these layoffs is that if we look at the company’s behaviour in the last few months, it’s hard to find any evidence that Bungie was, indeed, taking that many “exhaustive efforts” to “resolve” its financial losses. The company began hiring aggressively when it was acquired by Sony in July 2022 – it was pretty common to see Bungie employees on social media commiserating with those laid off in other studios and encouraging them to apply for jobs at the studio. Sony spent about $1.2 billion on a long-term incentive plan to reward Bungie employees who stayed with the company. With an approximate workforce of 1,600, that works out to an average of $750,000 per employee.
Just over a year later, in October 2023,Bungie laid off eight percent of its staff. This is when hiring finally slowed and the studio began to remove open positions from its job board. I’m not a professional analyst, but it seems like the funds Bungie received from Sony to maintain employee retention were not well spent, if there have been not one, but two major rounds of layoffs since the acquisition.
Let’s consider the steps that Bungiedidn’ttake. C-suite should be held accountable for its failure to hire sustainably and responsibly – this is not a case of the economy turning things topsy-turvy, but of bad planning and execution. Another thing Bungie didn’t do is cut the salaries of its C-suite, which is responsible for this mismanagement. Following the most basic of logic, the people responsible for the mismanagement should have been the ones fired instead of employees who actually create the game that makes the company its money and had no part to play in Bungie’s overly ambitious growth. In fact, these employees have done great work on The Final Shape – shouldn’t they have been rewarded instead?
But this isn’t what happened, of course. In fact, CEO Pete Parsons has bid on, and purchased, over 20 classic cars since the acquisition, according tohis Bring A Trailer account. I did some maths, and that adds up to over $2.4 million. Four of those cars were purchased after the 2023 layoffs, amounting to $386,750. His last purchase was on June 1. There isan album on Flickrwith photos of him and others examining many of these cars in a massive garage.
One employee saidthat Parsons invited them to see his new cars two days before laying them off.Another former employeetold a similar story about Parsons bragging about the new cars he’d bought, inviting them to his house to see them, and then being laid off days later. Glassdoor estimates that the average starting salary at Bungie is about $75,000. Parsons’ carsalonecould therefore have paid the annual salaries of about 30 employees. It’s unclear exactly how much money Parsons makes a year, but the acquisition likely made him extremely rich – rich enough to have a vintage car collection. He has not taken a salary cut, and neither have any other members of the C-suite.
Is it his money to spend as he wishes? Yes. Is he a bad person for saying that he did everything he could to mitigate these layoffs, all the while spending inordinate amounts of money on a hobby? Also yes. The ethical thing to do would have been to not throw hundreds of hardworking developers under the bus because of his bad business decisions, and to use the absurd amount of money he has to actually keep the business afloat. Alas, that’s not the timeline we live in. Parsons has at least 25 old cars, and 220 employees have to find a way to survive because he’s thrust them into unemployment.
What else is there to say, apart from that Pete Parsons and everybody responsible for this egregious mismanagement needs to step down? Industry insiderJeff Grubb saysthat Bungie will soon lose its autonomy and become like every other first-party Sony studio. What this means for Bungie’s future is unclear, but what is clear is that this never should have happened in the first place. At least, whatever happens, Pete Parsons will have his expensive cars.
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