Back when Sony acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion, the deal repeatedly stressed that the Destiny developer would continue to remain independent, and would operate adjacent to PS Studios, rather than underneath it. However, there were apparently performance targets in place which meant if the studio missed them, PlayStation management would wrestle back control.
It’s unclear that’s what’s happened this week, but following a significant downscaling of the Halo maker, it does sound like Sony is beginning to show a bit of authority over its acquisition. Well-connected industry reporter Jeff Grubb wrote on X (also Twitter) that “in time, Bungie will lose its autonomy and will become like any other PS Studio under SIE and Herman Hulst”.
While staff had been previously resistant to the idea of PlayStation management coming in, it seems like the latest round of lay offs are proving to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Bungie cut around 220 employees this week, while a further 150 were reallocated to roles elsewhere within Sony. A remaining 40 staff are in the process of establishing a brand new PS Studio.
And many former employees feel it’s time for current CEO Pete Parsons to go. “You are a liar, a thief, and so many things we can’t discuss publicly,” alleged ex-community manager Liana Ruppert. “Step down, and without the giant Sony pay out. This isn’t on Sony, this is squarely on the failure of leadership. Plain and simple.”
Griffin Bennett, who previously worked on Destiny, added: “[Is] c-suite taking accountability for any of this or still just ‘withholding bonuses’ and it’ll be ‘settled in-house’? Poor leadership has crushed one of the greatest developers of all time. Retire, Pete.”
And community coordinator Sam Bartley continued: “Coward. You did this. You chose this. I’m already listed as ‘do not work with’ and I don’t care anymore. You lied to my face. Straight to it. You also invited me to come see your new cars two days before you laid me off. Two. F**king. Days. Leave. Now.”
Pete Parsons joined Bungie all the way back in 2002, where he initially worked as an executive producer and studio manager. He had a hand in the release of Halo 2 and Halo 3, before briefly taking an executive producer position at Microsoft. He later returned to the studio when it went independent, prior to the release of Destiny.
[source x.com, via x.com, x.com, x.com, videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 38
“You are a liar, a thief, and so many things we can’t discuss publicly,”
I think by the time you've publicly accused someone of being a liar and a thief you've already crossed the threshold of what should be publicly alleged. So.... what else is he?
Ah yes, Jeff Grubb.
Guess we’ll wait for another source to report on this also so we know for sure its true.
I remember Sony reportedly paid the price it did to avoid layoffs and such (pretty brave of them). So for these layoffs to occur, and now hearing what some employees had to say, it's good Sony isn't to blame. And hopefully Sony can work things out. Bad leadership tends to lead to non desired outcomes.
„wrote on X (also Twitter)“ This joke can’t get old, can it?
Sounds like “Bungie” the company is done to me. Maybe not today or tomorrow but in a decade nobody is going to say they “work at Bungie” anymore.
Bungie is about to start making nothing but horizon games lol, but seriously probably a good thing, I heard their old management was horrible.
There were some tweets talking about how the CEO brought some employees to his house two days before they were laid off to show off his fancy ass car collection. Of course, he knew what was coming. Great guy!
Those poor workers, a lot of them used to be super proud of being at Bungie but Pete’s destroyed that.
Put them working on a Killzone project. Get them back to what they're good at.
sees Jeff's name
finds another source for infomation
Grubb might be just saying whatever but employees being mad at the CEO is definitely a thing that's happening. I also saw some of the employees still at the company saying they should form an union - which I hope they do
Gotta love how bots on other sites are blaming Jim Ryan for all this, dude isn't even the CEO anymore and Bungie's management problem has been known for a while.
All in all, Sony did give them a chance to fix their management before taking direct control...
Which is more than what Tango and Arkane Austin were given.
In all honesty, Sony is handling this situation the way it should. Take control, clean up management, reassess, recover in time. It s*cks for employees let go, but at least there is a chance studio survives.
@breakneck I have not seen any other publication bring this up hiroki is a money man and sees that bungie is failing hard of course there would be consequences especially after spending nearly 4 billion on them
Never thought I'd favor Hulst for anything, but in this case...eh...can't be worse.
Since it Grubbs i'll wait for some proper verification, but all the messages from the now ex staff and people who are still there are all pretty much on the same page, ie Pete Parsons has to go and that none of this is any of Sonys doing.
By all accounts the staff have been voicing concerns over quality issues and numerous other issues for years but management have completely ignored them and steam rolled ahead anyway, hence all these unavoidable mistakes, pretty grim reading to be fair.
Seems like Sony are the "good guys" in this mess, offering to take on some staff etc and honestly if Sony need to wrangle control of management, let them. I dont think its what any of the Bungie staff want, but I think they know they need it.
Sony will have to come in and completely drain the swamp. Downsized further no doubt as the headcount is massive and become another ps studio
Since talk of the buyout began, I’ve consistently asked, “What’s in it for Bungie?” With their live service ambitions, Sony at least get direct access to resources and consultation with leaders in the field, not to mention their hand was all but forced to do…something in the wake of Microsoft’s buying spree. Whether they’ve received the value for the absurd amount of money spent is up for debate (and Sony will be rightfully squeezing that out of this deal going forward) but I’ve always been puzzled as to what Bungie’s motivation was. Garage full of cars wasn’t exactly on my list of possibilities but, with everything coming out, I suppose it perfectly encapsulates the reality of what likely went down here.
Look the whole thing is awful and shouldn't degenerate into a Sony good, Bungie bad scenario, but it is somewhat encouraging to hear people involved exonerate Sony involvement in this.
This could end up being good for Bungie if it gets them back on course doing what they do best.
Hopefully it can all be resolved quickly as the current situation is very messy
@Cutmastavictory Well they paid for talent retention and from 150 that's spread across PS studios and 75 for a new team I guess they did.
Wow, it's funny how companies who virtue signal the most on the internet, usually end up being the most corrupt.
Just wait to you hear what the CEO gets for pay should be forced or given a golden handshake package because it's going to be a lot that's for sure. The man is scum like most CEOs take Andrew "Android" Wilson of EA that man got $25 million bonus last year and EA still laid off people and years previous he got bonuses and they shut down Visceral Games.
It's about time shareholders in the boards of these companies started asking why should you get all these bonuses after laying off people and games not selling like they should
The biggest sign that will prove if Sony really have overtaken Bungie is when Marathon turns up again...will it still be coming to Xbox.
@CielloArc
'But, but Microsoft...'
Yawn.
@AdamNovice That if we still have an Xbox when Marathon decides to show up again…
@NEStalgia
What's wrong with Hermen then? Of course, if you spread it out a lot, Playstation stuidos is no longer what it was 10 years ago. But on the other hand, if you see what it costs to make and release a game today, it is only logical. And if you look at how Sony as a company manages its studios, in my opinion they do it 10 times better than Microsoft. They actually hardly pay attention to the Xbox branch. And in terms of turnover, I understand that. But there are people working at Xbox and they can't do anything about it. In this situation there are still 155 people who can work within Playstation Sony shouldn't have done that, but they do.
Well I'm not involved in this drama, so who am I to make assumptions. I just hope "justice will be served" or something xD
@TommyNL Herman is Jim's fellow traveler, which is why he was placed in the role to begin with, and a lot of the same criticisms that are rightfully leveled at Jim are really shared with Herman. I've always felt that Herman needed to exit along with Jim to fix the problem, and was disappointed when he was promoted after the fact, but heartened only that the platform itself was an exec from Japan.
The bloated budgets, excessive westernization of the studios, seeming focus on marketing costing more than the product, Herman shares a lot of that.
Xbox mismanagement is a whole other kettle of fish, of course, and throwing ABK on top of that reminds me of the big old US railroad merger that still stands as one of the greatest examples in US business school of how "two failing companies merging together just creates one big failing company."
(If you're outside the US and the business history, the two biggest railroads in the 60's into the 70's, New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad, the Microsoft and Apple of the 1940's, were both badly mismanaged and running bankrupt. They decided to merge in a desperate bid to stay afloat. Alas, two bankrupt companies with scarce resources and bad management glued together not only simply created a larger problem, but the two organizations were run completely differently with two completely different operating principles (Ask both what industry they were in and the one would answer "railroads" and the other would answer "transportation", and the corporate cultures of both placed them at war with each other trying to sabotage their own other half. The end result was one day they ran out of money and ordered the trans stopped and abandoned right where they were, in the middle of the line. And that was that. Trains ceased to exist in the busiest half of the US suddenly mid-day. The government scrambled to create a shell organization to reclaim the rotting husks and make them barely run in an odd mismatch of hastily painted livery and old rolling stock still wearing WWII liveries and in the end the remaining RRs in other regions ended up absorbing much of it, which sounds profitable, but it was a rusting out, rotting husk of a railroad that had to be rebuilt and cost fortunes.
The standing testament to this today is Madison Square Garden, the baskeball and concert stadium in NYC. Built by the old PRR before the merger - when they decided selling event tickets was going to be more profitable than railroads and took the gorgeous, historic railroad station and demolished it to turn it into that while the station became a dank subterranean mall. Management grabbed the profits and headed for the boarder when the merger went through.
Xbox + ABK reminds me of this. And Sammy if he's reading will enjoy the train talk.
I must honestly say that I enjoyed reading your story! really genuinely interesting. I didn't know that story either. In fact, I'm going to look into it a little more. And it indeed gives a nice look at the situation. But still, this is neither the Sony nor the Microsoft of 10 years ago. I think that today a completely different management approach is needed to keep things running. It remains to be seen whether the right approach is sometimes chosen. But I do think Hermen knows what he is doing. In that respect, I honestly think he has more in mind for the industry than Phil Spencer. But that's my personal view on console land. And if Hermen had worked for Xbox and Phil for Playstation it would have been exactly the other way around.
Good luck to Hermen cause i'm sure cleaning up Bungie and live service mess will be difficult. But a lesson for him to avoid acquiring company like Bungie who came with a lot of problems.
@riceNpea If this guy ruined the studio then he should be called out to many of these suits get off any consequences while the real workers lose their jobs.
Interesting I remember both Sony and Bungie promising that this would not happen and the studio would stay independent, no doubt they will end up gutting the company and taking employees for their own studios
God I really hate this whole studio buyout/take over
This new studio should take over development of Marathon and make a stellar, pre-Halo 4 style SP campaign.
O yeah I 1000% see this happening after how Pete and Jason sold Bungie to PlayStation Studios.
@BeerIsAwesome this has been my stance. Jim Ryan was not the greatest leader and caused a lot of issues for Sony. But he has the foresight to make sure that the acquisition has stipulations in the event bungie continues the same behaviour they’ve exhibited for over a decade. That is why I believe bungie was acquired. IPs and presumably many of the developers, most of who have now been fired.
Good riddance to Bungie, and I hope many of the people who lost their jobs (who Sonys interim CEO praised) are able to be either hired back by Sony or provided better benefits than bungies leadership has been willing to give.
@TommyNL the guy was responsible for Killzone, he should have been leading Playstation from the get go and not Jim Ryan. Sonys current leadership setup, with Hulst running PlayStation and a different dude (forget his name, sorry!) running Sonys other stuff is what I’ve pushed for since Ryan took over. Ryan is a hardware guy, not software and had no business making software related decisions.
@CielloArc they really need to take a gander at the actual acquisition agreement. While not easily accessible it can be dug up with enough work, and it’s very telling. Ryan anticipated this. He was not the greatest leader for the brand but he was not an idiot at all. Bungie is notorious for being obnoxious and arrogant. This was an investment banking on their continued ineptitude. And it paid off. Whether it pays off to the tune of 3.6 billion is up in the air, certainly won’t be clear anytime soon. But this was an IP acquisition.
Bungie wasn’t what Sony bought. They bought Destiny, Marathon and whatever else they were working on.
I’m not going to lie, the ruthlessness of that decision is admirable. Not every day you buy a company knowing they’ll fail and taking the spoils.
So is it "Hermen" or "Herman"?
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