Bungie Shuffles Marathon Leadership as Fears of Further Layoffs Loom

Current Bungie doesn't have salvation at this point. The people in charge need to go. This "fear" and "stress" at the Bungie workplace that so many reports have talked about since last year is completely their fault.

"Sony wasted money buying Bungie" yeah that happened two years ago so it's old news, now it's time for solutions. What Sony should do is:
1.- Take complete control over Bungie. Sounds like Destiny 2 last dlc has to be a huge hit to save the current Bungie independence so there is a big chance it won't happen. PS is a lot of things but they still make pretty good games and Bungie needs that, direction.
2.- Kick the CEO and other administrative high ranks. I know internet is very sensitive to the concept of firing people but we are talking about the people who made a mess of Destiny 2, the people who decided to fire their own devs in 2023 (probably to get back their % of Bungie shares assigned by the Sony acquisition)and the people who played martyr so the community would blame Sony even when they didn't make the decision.
3.- Retain all the devs you can. Will be difficult because a lot of devs may not want to know anything about Bungie anymore once the current regime is over but Bungie isn't London Studios, you can't just close it.

Personally I don't think Bungie was that much of a waste. The only way Sony was going to stop the service dream was with a failure of their own. When you are minority owner of the biggest service in existence (Fortnite) and your biggest chinese partner makes service hit over service hit (Hoyo) the failures of SEGA, Warner, etc means nothing, you need to shoot your shot BUT when your own failure makes you lose money that's when perspectives change. Knowing how much money Sony is putting in games and how they canceled at least 6 services + the costs post release like future content, servers, etc and the possibility of a second wave of services already in development by that point the Bungie implosion probably saved Sony just in time.

Now about Marathon shifting to hero stuff is a big downgrade for me so I'm pretty much out unless it shows that can be special, maybe the ex Valorant dev can do it, I hope so.

If Bungie doesn’t get it together Sony will absorb them into PlayStation and take full control of them.

@gymratAmarillo 100% agree with you.
To add a little bit to it, Destiny is such a ln established and recognized brand that if they release a new game with less predatory monetisation and a more streamlined progression system that lets new players in easily, it would be very successful critically and also profitable.

@gymratAmarillo bungie started failing when they started hiring personal friends and activists.
gaming companies should hire employees again that do their job.
no social media account should be allowed.

Bungie is a mess of a company, I bet playstation has buyer remorse now after watching this internal struggle 😕

@The_ghostmen 100% correct, bungie should ban twitter for their employees so they could 100% focus on their job. And I think firing anyone that have colored hair will do good for the overall quality of employee in the company, lol.

Curious to see what else has changed about Marathon we might not know about. The initial pitch did basically nothing for me. I'm not much of a hero shooter fan either but a shift that big could mean they may have abandoned the extraction shooter space. I hope so. Despite their many issues I'd love to see Bungie turn things around if possible.

Sadly I highly doubt the Finale Shape is going to stop the future layoffs. Tough spot they find themselves in.

I continue to be perplexed at the shortsightedness of how Destiny 2 has been handled. Even a couple years ago I was interested to give it a try but they actively locked out new players and made the barrier to entry so high by removing access to the base content and leaving no enticing entry point. So naturally each subsequent expansion was going to be less productive from a gradually shrinking player base.

I suspect they learned their lesson for Marathon and should be taking notes from Helldivers and other successful ventures that are much more welcoming for new players to join in.

As far as the shift to a more hero shooter genre rather than custom characters, that automatically makes it sound less enticing to me and like more of a desperate move to reduce development time and cost. But I don’t know - they do need to get Marathon out the door, so I can understand that. Either way, I have a bad feeling about it.

I am definitely not in the habit of wishing a games company to fail, as this is my main hobby and interest, but the sooner The Final Shape gets released and probably tanks the better. The longer Bungie is allowed control of everything, the less there will be left to salvage if Sony takes control as was rumoured to happen should Bungie fail to meet financial sales targets. Sony will have to spend so much time and money trying to get Bungie back its reputation, it’s going to be a mammoth task. $3.6 Billion or whatever it was that Sony paid is a huge amount of payout for a studio that had basically one franchise so there is no danger that Bungie will close, but there is going to have to be some serious plans in place to turn things around. Most of, if not all of my gaming friends that I met on the original Destiny have given up the idea of playing the new expansion as they know it will be more of the same, so with the probability that a huge amount of people are thinking similarly, I really can’t see Bungie in control of its own ‘Destiny’ by the end of this year.

@gymratAmarillo that supposed leaked email indicates Sony is extremely angry with bungie management, and unless I’m missing further context it sounds like they’re more than willing to pursue legal action. Every time bungie gets bought by a bigger company they self sabotage and then leave. It sounds more and more like Sony will be the one to wipe them out, or at least the completely unhinged and incompetent managers. Developers at bungie have for years been open about management being a mess, and laying off devs to “recoup” their losses due to bad decisions.

@Th3solution yep, any interest I had in marathon is gone now. Especially since this is change really seems to feel like one brought on by a desperation to get the game out, instead of one for creative reasons.

@Jay767 sounds like even their devs are hoping for this. Current management is nuts.

@gymratAmarillo worth mentioning that bungie is also frequently considered the industry’s “problem spouse”. Always getting into new arrangements with companies, making a mess and then playing victim. About time they were forced to grow up.

Nooooo. I ***** hate hero shooters. I want to customize my character and make them MINE with lots of armor and gadgets and doohickies all over my character. The aesthetic of that teaser trailer had me by the BALLS it was so cool looking to me. I do NOT want this to become a Valorant-like game, where they try to force me to care about a character whose lore I will NEVER engage with.

"PlayStation Boss Jim Ryan Says Bungie Offers ‘Way More’ Value Than Activision Does for Xbox"

This aged like milk

Layoff from below as they made sure the above were safe last time and looked out for each other. Bungie should just be swallowed up by Sony at this point because I'd be surprised if The Final Shape even sell well and saves them. They over predicted their sales numbers and basically lied to Sony to get the acquisition approved, it was also over priced as well

Bungie started to mess with players who wanted to take a break and made this path of if you don't buy the why new DLC you get shafted with sunsetting content (at the time). If you took a break then you were upped to a certain light level and most things where locked behind the next DLC, dungeon keys didn't come with actually DLC but sold separately.

I really don't see Bungie lasting by end of year if that management is still in charge