August 2nd, 2024. The Bungie Situation.

Hot damn.

So Bungie, the renowned studio behind games like Marathon, Halo, and Destiny, just laid off a bunch of people. And it's to a degree that we haven't really seen in any other software companies. They have lost 25% of their staff in just one year, across two major waves of layoffs. The first wave was back towards the end of 2023, and the second wave just happened recently, around July 31st of 2024.

This personally really stings me. I grew up playing Halo 3 and Reach on my brother's Xbox, and later I played Halo CE and Halo 2 on my computers when I learned that they actually got PC ports in high school. When my friends were playing Destiny 2 back in summer of 2020, they convinced me to hop in, and it's become one of my favorite games.

Allow me to highlight some major points about this whole situation.

1. Bungie is currently owned by/partnered with Sony, merging in 2022. They were independent for a few years, after breaking away from Activision Blizzard in 2019.
2. Bungie has not made many full game releases recently. They made Halo Reach under Microsoft in 2010. They went on to make Destiny, releasing in 2014 under Activision, which received two expansions. Destiny 2 would release in 2017, and has received 8 major expansions ever since.
3. Right now, Destiny 2 is Bungie's main income stream. They have no other active games. Bungie recently invested into making many other smaller, separate projects, which has failed to materialize into product and resulted in devastating losses and revenue misses.
4. In Destiny 2, the main income streams are:
   1. Expansions that release every year(roughly).
   2. Seasons that release once a quarter.
   3. Eververse, the in-game cosmetic store, which receives new content every Season.
5. As for Destiny 2's recent history,
   1. The most recent expansion, The Final Shape, received critical acclaim, peaking at 314k players on Steam.

1. The Witch Queen would release the year before Lightfall, with critical acclaim and peaking at 290k players.
2. Lightfall, which released the year before, received mixed reception, but still peaked at 316k players.
1. Bungie does still have one announced game, Marathon, a live service game due to release in 2025

Bungie is in a very, very hard place right now. They are currently a one trick pony. Destiny 2 is THE game that they have. The last 10 years have nothing but Destiny and Destiny products. It is their only cash cow.

Destiny has fended off competition in the past, and should be commended for its resilience over the years. Recent game development history is littered with the corpses of failed Live Service games, both PvE and PvP. Crystal Dynamic's Avengers, Anthem, Evolve, Lawbreakers, Suicide Squad, Hyperscape. I believe even Outriders, which received decent critical acclaim and an expansion, still hasn't broken even yet.

But Bungie management tried to bite off more than they could chew. The news all point towards Bungie management not investing enough in Destiny, failing to have a clear, coherent vision for the future, and spreading their resources too thin, while heartlessly spending lavishly.

Now they are in a desperate cycle. They are cutting out devs to reduce costs, but less devs means less content that can be created. Less content created could mean less players, which means less profit. Bungie leadership has simply made too many bad bets and investments, and now Bungie as a whole is suffering the consequences.

Especially concerning news was an informant stating that, "alternate history is insolvency", if they never merged with Sony. If Bungie was not purchased by Sony, there would have no longer been a Bungie.

This is an exceptionally bad spot to be in. Their financials seem to be so bad that they were a few months to a year away from coming apart at the seams, and had to be bailed out of drowning by big brother Sony, at the cost of their independence.

And with Destiny 2 as their only income, if they ever released a bad expansion, then all profit would simply cease. Any good investor knows to diversify their income and investments as much as possible, and Bungie leadership tried to do so, but far too late and far too fast.

I hope Bungie, and Destiny, can continue. I love Destiny. I can't deny it. It has delivered a magic that many other games cannot. But Bungie leadership, you really fucked this one up. I hope the developers can continue to make Destiny, and polish it to a shine. Maybe if Sony takes over leadership, but gives developers the leeway and resources to allow Destiny to fix its foundations, it could become profitable again? I really don't know, but right now this is not feasible.