Bungie, the creator of the original Halo games for Microsoft and currently the developer of the Destiny sci-fi shooter series, is the latest major game developer to be hit by layoffs.
Bloomberg reports that an unknown number of Bungie's team members were let go today. The same reported claims, via unnamed sources, that the developer has delayed the release of upcoming projects. That includes its latest Destiny 2 expansion pack, The Final Shape. Originally announced as launching on February 27, 2024, the expansion will now reportedly be pushed back to sometime in June 2024.
The same report also claims that Bungie's next major game project, the reboot of its older sci-fi shooter series Marathon, has been delayed as well. While the game didn't have an official launch date, Bloomberg reports it has been pushed back to a launch sometime in 2025. These layoffs come less than two years after Sony acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion in January 2022.
2022 has been, by all accounts, a solid year for the video and PC game industry overall. However, that has not prevented a lot of big layoffs from hitting some major game publishers and developers. That includes the massive game publisher Embracer Group, which completely shut down Saints Row creators Volition earlier this summer, among other similar moves.
Other game developer layoffs have been reported by Telltale Games, Beamdog, Team 17, Crystal Dynamics, Relic, Blackbird Interactive, and others.
Perhaps the most surprising layoff news came a few weeks ago. Epic Games, the makers of the Unreal Engine game development tools, the creators of the hit game Fortnite, and the founders of the Epic Games Store, announced that it would cut over 800 team members or about 16 percent of its workforce. It also sold off a couple of companies that it had purchased only a few years ago, including the online song store Bandcamp.
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