The Destiny 2 community was rocked on Oct. 30 as reports rolled in from those affected that Bungie was in the midst of a sweeping round of layoffs. Those layoffs not only have major implications for the studio itself, but also the future of Destiny 2 as a whole.
As reported by Bloomberg, around eight percent of Bungie’s staff were laid off following a recent announcement by company executives two weeks prior that yearly revenue was running 45 percent below projections. It comes at a time when player sentiment surrounding Destiny 2 is at an all-time low, in part thanks to the overwhelmingly negative reception to the recent Lightfall expansion and more recent points of controversy like the lackluster State of the Game post for 2023.
Sources from Bloomberg’s reporting suggested that employees had been energized to work on a recovery plan, but instead the lackluster performance of the developer’s flagship franchise has resulted in a significant reduction to the workforce in key areas, with many notable and veteran figures affected.
Who was laid off from Destiny 2 developer Bungie?
In Oct. 30’s round of layoffs, around 100 Bungie employees are estimated to have been cut from the total studio workforce of 1200. Very few teams emerged unscathed, with the layoffs impacting everything, from community and legal to the audio and art departments.
The community team was one of the most noticeable to be affected at the start of the day, with community manager and accessibility co-lead Liana Ruppert, social media lead Griffin Bennett, and community manager Sam Bartley all let go. These make up the majority of the faces that the Destiny 2 playerbase had come to develop a rapport with via the This Week in Destiny blogs, with Bennett notably having been with Bungie for over five years.
Veteran status did nothing to make employees exempt from the cuts. Two figureheads of the studio, Michael Salvatori and Lorraine McLees, who had both been with Bungie for over 20 years, were among those now out of work. “Tenure was no shield,” wrote McLees, who had been creating marketing, logo, and key art for the company since Oni and Halo: Combat Evolved.
Alongside Salvatori in the audio department, Michael Sechrist, the composer behind beloved Destiny 2 tracks such as Deep Stone Lullaby from Beyond Light, was also let go.
However, it was some of the lesser known teams that appear to have been affected the most. Franziska Wischmann, who was an associate tester at Bungie, said her entire QA team focused on armor and expressions was “wiped” in the layoffs. The impact on QA specifically is backed up by additional reporting from IGN, whose sources told them that a “noticeable” number of employees had already been dismissed from the QA team in the leadup to this round of layoffs.
The full scale of the layoffs remains difficult to get the details on. Sources told IGN in that same report that Bungie leadership has been making a concerted effort to mask who has been let go and what teams have been most heavily impacted. This was backed up by additional reporting from Forbes’ Paul Tassi, whose sources said many team and line managers didn’t even know who was being cut from their teams until it happened.
What the Bungie layoffs mean for Destiny 2 and The Final Shape, explained
While confirmation is still yet to come from Bungie itself, Bloomberg reports that The Final Shape expansion for Destiny 2 has been delayed to June 2024.
This was something announced to employees two weeks prior to the Oct. 30 layoffs by management. Weak player retention and annual revenue massively missing projections were marked as the culprit alongside “good but not great” feedback the expansion was receiving internally. While this doesn’t initially link the layoffs in with the delay of the expansion, the delay is what has resulted in the studio transitioning into a cost-saving stance.
Initially, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons reportedly told staff they would be cutting costs and implementing salary and hiring freezes, but now layoffs appear to have become part of the studio’s recovery strategy as well.
What those employees are left with is a fanbase bitter about the layoffs, calls to cancel The Final Shape pre-orders in protest, and what was once projected to be a regular season launching on Nov. 28 now set to extend out to last over six months due to the delay of The Final Shape.
Season of the Lost was the previous record holder for the longest Destiny 2 season, spanning 182 days before the launch of The Witch Queen. However, its length was mitigated by the mid-season release of the 30th Anniversary Event, which in itself had enough content to be equivalent to a new season launch. As of now, no such mid-season content injections have been announced to make season 23’s lengthy runtime have potentially less of a negative impact on player retention.
The significant reduction in the community team due to the layoffs will also likely be felt most in the amount of communication that players receive from Bungie going forward.
The fractured relationship between Destiny 2’s social team and the playerbase has been a topic of discussion as recently as July, where it was reiterated that a steady reduction and anonymization of communication was due to the continued harassment of Bungie employees. The loss of figures such as Liana Ruppert, who had become one of the few faces that players were regularly able to interact with, will undoubtedly cause communication to further dwindle.
Players will be hoping to learn more about the current situation at the Destiny 2 developer and what the cuts mean for the game’s future in the upcoming This Week in Destiny blog, but it’s unclear whether Bungie would deliver any clarity on its plans going forward based on how it has reportedly even tried to obfuscate details internally.
