Bungie is laying off 220 employees and moving others to PlayStation

Additionally, Parsons wrote that Bungie was working to integrate another 155 employees into other departments within Sony Interactive Entertainment. These numbers, combined with the 100 people laid off in October of last year, mean that Bungie has lost roughly 40 percent of its total workforce in the last 12 months. Bungie had around 1,200 employees last year before 100 people were laid off amid a delay to the big Destiny 2: The Final Shape expansion.

This latest layoff announcement was accompanied by the news that Bungie employees are working on a new game.

“We are working with PlayStation Studios leadership to spin out one of our incubation projects – an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe – to form a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue its promising development,” Parsons wrote. 

Parsons offered an explanation for all the news, stating that Bungie grew too quickly and spread its leadership team too thin among its many projects. This had a knock-on effect on the studio’s known projects, resulting in what Parsons called a “quality miss” with Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion and the delay of its next game, Marathon.

“We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red,” he wrote.

Parsons wrote that Bungie will continue to focus on Destiny 2 and Marathon. “We still have over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon, and we will continue to build amazing experiences that exceed our players’ expectations.”