Destiny 3 myths, Payback cancellation, mass layoffs and dissatisfaction with management: Jason Schreier spoke about the situation at Bungie Studios
This week, Bungie Studios announced the layoff of another 220 employees and the beginning of a major reorganisation of the workflow, as well as the transfer of 155 people to Sony, which owns the studio.
Against the backdrop of this news, there was a huge amount of speculation on the web, which concerned both the policies of Bungie's management and the games being developed. Journalist Jason Schreier conducted his own investigation and published it on the pages of Bloomberg. We offer you the main theses from the material.
Here's What We Know
Jason Schreier talked to ten former and current employees of Bungie, who revealed a number of important details:
- Destiny 3 development hasn't been cancelled, as it never even started. Instead of creating a new game, the company plans to support Destiny 2 by adding new content and continuing its story.
- The third-person shooter Payback was a game in the Destiny universe, but by no means Destiny 3. Its concept was inspired by Warframe and Genshin Impact, but that doesn't matter anymore since that pilot project was cancelled two months ago.
- The team that worked on Payback was transferred to the production of sci-fi shooter Marathon.
- The last expansion for Destiny 2 received excellent reviews from critics and gamers, but did not justify the financial forecasts of Bungie and Sony. At the same time, the developers are confident that the game will not lose popularity and in general it has a great future.
In many problems of Bungie interviewed developers blame personally the head of the company Pete Parsons, who underestimated the alarm signals, radiated excessive optimism and hoped that the problems will solve themselves. But the difficulties piled up and led to a second, even more extensive downsizing.
Layoffs affected all departments of Bungie, but the most affected were the teams that dealt with narrative, sound and player support. Among the sacked were experienced executives Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, who have given many years to Bungie, but Pete Parsons remains in his position, does not respond to criticism and has not been held accountable for gross errors.
All laid-off employees will receive severance pay of at least three months' salary and retain access to health insurance.
Source: Bloomberg