In January 2022, Sony started the year strong by announcing the redemption of Bungie against 3.6 billion dollars. The studio, known for the first Halobut especially more recently for destinytherefore belongs to the family PlayStation, but remains independent. Which may not last.
IGN interviewed several employees and former members of Bungie, which laid off around a hundred employees last October, mainly in the marketing and communications departments. All is not rosy in the studio, because obviously, Sony could take control Bungie in the relatively near future. Currently the board of directors consists of Pete Parsons (CEO of Bungie), Luis Villegas (CTO of Bungie), Jason Jones (co-founder of Bungie), Eric Lempel (senior vice president of PlayStation Worldwide Marketing) and Hermen Hulst (director of PlayStation Studios), which means that Bungie is not entirely independent. But according to sourcesIGN, if Bungie would not achieve financial objectives, Sony could dissolve the board and therefore take control of the studio.
Suffice to say that if Bungie pushed back the extension The Final Form of Destiny 2 and take your time with MarathonA extraction shooter PvPthis is so as not to miss things and to avoid that Sony does not follow his plan. Bungie also made great efforts to reduce budgetsit is he himself who is at the origin of the layoffs and he would also reduce travel costs, stop recruitment, eliminate end-of-year bonuses and continue to organize the Bungie Day on the Internet. Several benefits would also be eliminated, such as salary adjustments, bonuses and employee birthday gift cards.
This obviously has an impact on employee morale, management would cut short any discussion on the subject of layoffs and Bungie could also outsource certain sectors, notably that of Quality Assurance. The studio currently has its own team QAsomething quite rare in the industry, but the team is gradually emptying and some employees think that Bungie will end up removing it to call on an external studio for Quality Assurance.
Clearly, the situation of Bungie is complicated, there is a good chance that the studio will end up completely merging with Sony to, why not, become yet another PlayStation Studios, but thus lose its independence. For the moment, nothing has been decided, even if this should be decided in 2024, while the games live service of Sony have taken a hit recently.
Fans of Destiny 2 can still pre-order The Final Form has €44.99 (- 10%) on Gamesplanet.
| Clint008 Editor – Tester |
