Bungie is laying off “most” of the Destiny 2 team after the shooter MMO’s final update earlier this month. According to a statement from the PlayStation-owned studio, the company determined the game “fell short of expectations these past several years,” and is now restructuring its workforce as its next projects are in “early incubation.” These cuts also include letting go of some of the folks working on Marathon, support for which is still ongoing.

This is the latest in a long line of mass layoffs at PlayStation, which has also shuttered Concord developer Firewalk Studios, Demon’s Souls and Shadow of the Colossus remake team Bluepoint, and Singstar developer London Studio. All in all, it seems pretty dire over at PlayStation Studios, and Bungie, which Sony acquired for $3.6 billion in 2022, has apparently led to a $560 million loss for the company. Bungie had already undergone significant layoffs under Sony, and now the company is whittling down the developer even further.

The whole thing is a case study in the crash resulting from studios chasing the live-service dream of forever games and massive profits, and the end result is that people who made a game that people loved are losing their jobs thanks to years of mismanagement by people who are still employed. Even people who don’t play Destiny 2 have reason to lament what’s happened.

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© Bluesky

Dear executives, c-suite, leadership, and management:

Thanking your team for "resilience" and "continued support" during "difficult times" is beyond tone deaf as you twist teh knife while playing around and putting the livelihoods of any amount of people at risk.

Nick Mudry (@nickmudry.com) 2026-06-25T14:50:16.878Z

Whole situation is baffling.

Why, almost 9 years after Destiny 2's launch, are the next projects so far away in "early incubation" as to not be able to roll the Destiny 2 team onto them for full production? Why have they not been brought forward, with Destiny 2 "short of expectations" for years?

Chris Tapsell (@christapsell.bsky.social) 2026-06-25T14:56:16.006Z

Our games industry is people. Our studios are people. Our teams people, our games by people for people. Our games are made by people, in groups of people, in teams of people, making people things for people.

The magic is people, and the people deserve so much better than all this. I am so sorry.

Rami Ismail (رامي) (@ramiismail.com) 2026-06-25T14:58:06.751Z

I just don't think laying off people working on one of, if not the best game to come out so far in 2026 is great business.

Jeff Gerstmann (@jeffgerstmann.com) 2026-06-25T15:20:42.140Z

hard to think of another big studio whose workers have been as consistently fucked over as bungie. absolutely criminal treatment of some of the most talented developers in the industry.

nat. (@natclayton.bsky.social) 2026-06-25T14:55:57.683Z

One small but very telling detail in this whole thing is that the URL that leads to Sony’s announcement of the Bungie layoffs is almost identical to the one it used when it announced that it was shutting down Firewalk, with the only difference being that the Bungie announcement has a “2” at the end of the slug. It’s as if it’s a sequel to all the previous carnage.

Also the fact you can just remove the "2" from this URL and get the Concord closure sure is something. Can't even be empathetically original in your subject about ruining people's lives: sonyinteractive.com/en/news/blog…

Nick Mudry (@nickmudry.com) 2026-06-25T14:52:01.213Z

We still don’t know how many people are affected by the layoffs at Bungie, but some developers have marked themselves as “safe” from the cuts thus far. We’ll know the full scale of this preventable disaster in the coming days.

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