It’s been a rough few months to be a Destiny 2 fan, but it’s even worse if you’re one of the developers who worked on the shooter over the past several years. Five weeks ago, Bungie announced that Destiny 2’s next update would be its last, bringing the live-service game to an end a little less than nine years after its launch. At the time, it wasn’t quite clear what this meant for the studio – some theorized the Destiny 2 team would all get to work on Destiny 3 – but today confirmed one of the worse outcomes.
Bungie has announced significant layoffs, which will include “most of the Destiny team,” some Marathon developers, and employees at Sony Interactive Entertainment that helped support Bungie, according to a statement from Hurmen Hulst, CEO of Sony’s Studio Business Group. “We explored multiple alternatives before concluding that a reduction was necessary to align the studio’s resources with its current priorities and long-term goals,” Hulst writes.
As for Bungie’s more recent game, Hulst adds, “Marathon remains an important part of our portfolio, and we will continue to support the team as they build on the strong foundation established in Season 1 and 2, and as they work on incubation efforts for future projects. While it’s too early to discuss, we are encouraged by the creativity and opportunities that lie ahead.” In other words, it seems like Marathon is safe for now, but it’s hardly a guarantee the game will stick around as long as Destiny 2 has.
Bungie issued its own statement as well, justifying the cuts by saying, “Following our final content update to Destiny 2, and with our future projects still in early incubation, we unfortunately could not continue operating at our previous size.” Still, the scale of the layoffs implies that Bungie will be left a shadow if its former self, and that’s after several other waves of layoffs at the developer in the past three years.
Destiny 2 released its final update, Monument of Triumph on June 9. Alongside the announcement of the game’s shutdown, it also released Destiny 2: The Collection, which bundles together all of Destiny 2’s available expansions and content packs into one product.
Game Informer sends its sympathies to the many developers faced with losing their jobs. Bungie’s most recent game, Marathon, is one of our highest-rated of the year so far.