Sony has hit Destiny studio Bungie with another major round of layoffs, and this one cuts deep. The cuts were made public on June 25th, and they land as Destiny 2 closes out its live-service run.
In a statement posted to the PlayStation Blog, SIE Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst said the reduction affects "a significant number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members." Sony framed it as aligning the studio's resources with its current priorities.
The hard number comes from the paperwork. A Washington State WARN filing lists at least 292 roles at Bungie's Bellevue headquarters, with separations effective July 9th, as reported by GeekWire. Coverage from Forbes's Paul Tassi describes the true scale as closer to half the studio, though that wider figure is an estimate, not an official count.
There's a leadership change on top of the cuts. Per Forbes and The Game Post, studio head Justin Truman is stepping down, with former VP of Operations Poria Torken taking over as the new head of Bungie. Worth flagging: that leadership swap comes from press reporting, not from Sony's official post.
The End Of A Live-Service Era
This didn't come out of nowhere. The layoffs arrive right after Destiny 2 shipped its FINAL live-service content update, effectively winding down the franchise that has carried the studio for over a decade.
It's also the third major round of cuts since Sony bought Bungie for $3.6 billion back in 2022. A 2024 round took out roughly 220 people, and with this one the total climbs past 600. That promise of studio independence Sony made at the time of the deal looks thinner with every cycle.
For longtime fans, the irony stings. Bungie spent years fighting FOR its independence. The studio behind the original Halo split from Microsoft in 2007, then split from Activision in 2019 specifically to own Destiny and run it on its own terms. Landing back under a platform holder, and now shrinking under one, is a tough turn for a developer that prized its independence for two decades.
There's history with the new bet, too. Marathon revives Bungie's own pre-Halo sci-fi franchise from the mid-90s, this time as an online extraction shooter. The studio has talked up years-long story plans for it, which makes the timing of these cuts all the more nerve-wracking for the people building it.
For anyone who has followed the studio, this is grimly familiar. We covered the layoffs that hit Bungie just months after The Final Shape, and more recently the move to shift most of the studio onto Marathon. The pattern has been pointing this direction for a while.
Why It Matters
With Destiny 2 past its last major content drop and no announced successor, Bungie's near-term future now rides almost entirely on Marathon. That's a heavy bet, given the extraction shooter's rocky launch and the fan campaigns, including a Destiny 3 petition past 140,000 signatures, begging Sony to invest in the world fans actually want more of. Sony says Marathon remains an important part of its portfolio and that the team will keep building on it.
One thing we won't do is overstate the numbers. The confirmed figure is at least 292 roles per the WARN filing, with reporting describing it as roughly half the studio. Anything past that is estimate territory until Sony or Bungie says otherwise. Our thoughts are with everyone affected as they figure out their next move.
After years of layoff headlines tied to Destiny, does parking the franchise and going all-in on Marathon feel like the right call to you, or the wrong one? Sound off in the comments below!
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