Nearly 300 employees at Bungie's Bellevue, Washington headquarters are out of work following what a state filing reveals is the studio's third major layoff in three years. A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice filed with Washington's Employment Security Department shows 292 staff will be separated as of July 9, a figure that does not include Bungie workers outside the state.
The cuts arrive as Bungie faces a cascade of commercial failures. The studio ended new content production for Destiny 2, its flagship franchise, while Marathon, an extraction shooter that launched in March with a budget exceeding $250 million, has struggled to retain players. Sony, which acquired Bungie in 2022 for $3.6 billion, recently disclosed a $765 million impairment loss tied specifically to the studio's underperformance.
Bungie once employed roughly 1,000 workers in Bellevue as recently as 2023. Between October 2023 and July 2024 alone, the studio had already cut around 320 staff. With the new layoffs factored in, Bungie's workforce has been gutted. The studio was reported to employ 850 people entering 2024.
Sony Interactive Entertainment's Herman Hulst offered sparse details in a statement, describing the layoffs as "difficult" and "painful" but "necessary to align the studio's resources with its current priorities and long-term goals." He acknowledged the cuts affected "most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members" without specifying numbers.
The WARN notice, which redacts individual names but lists job titles, shows the cuts swept across every department. Artists, technical animators, audio leads, sound designers, engineers, producers, systems designers, and integrated Sony support teams managing day-to-day infrastructure all took hits. The breadth of the layoffs underscores the severity of Bungie's restructuring.
Behind-the-scenes turmoil has also resurfaced. Justin Truman, who became studio head last year, has stepped down from his role, according to reporting by Bloomberg. Poria Torkan, formerly the studio's VP of Operations, has reportedly assumed control. The WARN notice also mentions a "Chief Vision Officer" position among those affected, sparking speculation that co-founder Jason Jones, who created both Halo and Destiny, may have left the studio. Jones maintains a notably private profile and rarely addresses the media.
If Jones has departed, it would mark a symbolic end for the studio that produced some of gaming's most influential first-person shooters. Such a development would underscore how far Bungie has fallen from its peak influence in the industry.
The road to collapse traces back to decisions made around Destiny 2's content roadmap. The game's Edge of Fate expansion last summer underperformed, setting off internal discussions about the franchise's future. After December's Renegades expansion, a Star Wars crossover that fared even worse and failed to move sales or player retention, leadership made the call to end new content.
Bungie had explored several options internally. A proposed "Destiny Infinity" relaunch that would have bundled major expansions never materialized, with leadership ultimately determining the costs and risks were prohibitive given the need to support Marathon. A third mainline Destiny game was considered but rejected, with production costs cited as the deciding factor.
The studio's troubles accelerated after its 2019 split from Activision ended a 10-year partnership. With publishing control back in-house, Bungie self-published Destiny 2 starting in 2019, but this independence brought no financial relief as expansion quality declined and the player base eroded.
Marathon, meant to be a fresh start, launched in early access with an eye-watering budget and industry expectations in tow. Instead, the extraction shooter became another black mark, with analysts noting it missed sales targets from day one. Sony continues to insist the game remains a priority and that Bungie teams are working on "incubation efforts for future projects," though what those efforts entail remains opaque.
Author Emily Chen: "Bungie's collapse from a thousand-employee powerhouse to this is a cautionary tale about how fast momentum can evaporate in gaming when you stop making hit content."
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