Bungie, Quantic Dream, id Software: a wave of layoffs is hitting gaming this summer
The gaming industry is heading into what one industry journalist is calling a "bloodbath" — a wave of layoffs hitting studios at Sony, Microsoft, EA, and independent publishers all at once. Bungie alone is reportedly cutting around 400 jobs, roughly half its workforce, after Destiny 2 received its final content update on June 9 and the new extraction shooter Marathon failed to gain traction. Sony has already written down $765 million tied to the Bungie acquisition and Marathon's poor launch.
The live-service reckoning
The Bungie situation is the most visible sign of a broader structural problem. The studio's $3.6 billion acquisition by Sony in 2022 was supposed to give PlayStation a foothold in live-service gaming. Instead, Marathon underperformed, Destiny 2 wound down, and Destiny 3 has not been greenlit. Bloomberg first reported the layoffs; the 50% figure comes from French journalist Sylvain Trinel, who has also warned that id Software, Bethesda, and BioWare face pressure in the weeks ahead.
> "The Xbox situation is just the beginning of a bloodbath for studios owned by major publishers. This is a genuine catastrophe. I'd keep an eye on id Software, Bethesda, and BioWare. What I heard today is not encouraging — and this is just the start." > — Sylvain Trinel, BFM journalist
Trinel's specific figures for those studios are unverified and no official statements have come from Microsoft or EA. But the broader timing is notable: Microsoft's fiscal year ends June 30, and restructuring announcements typically follow shortly after.
Paris takes a hit too
Paris-based Quantic Dream is planning 115 layoffs, according to a report by French games industry union STJV. The cuts follow the failure of Spellcasters Chronicles — a game that peaked at 888 concurrent players at launch in February 2026 — and the ongoing delay of Star Wars Eclipse, announced all the way back in 2021 with no gameplay shown since. The union flagged procedural irregularities in the redundancy plan and raised concerns about the use of generative AI.
A pattern, not an isolated event
The gaming industry has lost around 45,000 jobs since 2022, even as total revenue hit a record $195.6 billion in 2025. Private investment in gaming fell 55% year-over-year. The pattern is consistent: publishers overcommitted to live-service titles — Marathon, Concord, Spellcasters — and are now consolidating around a smaller number of proven franchises. TechTimes has a useful breakdown of how the downturn spans Sony, Microsoft, and EA simultaneously.
More announcements are likely before the end of summer. The studios named so far are probably not the last.