Bungie Devs React To More Mass Layoffs: ‘My Whole Team Is Gone'
Bungie Devs React To More Mass Layoffs: ‘My Whole Team Is Gone'
Bungie’s CEO locked his account just as the layoffs were announced this morning
Laying off 17% of your staff right before a big DLC is released? I don't need to tell you that it won't be the employees getting a raise or bonus. That would be silly to pay the people that actually make the game more money.
The big dlc has been out for months(?)
There's a few things going on, here
- A lot of leaders are using layoffs as a flex on workers that got raises post-2020. There's a lot of "they need to know their place" language in boardrooms, and not just in this industry.
- I'm assuming this gets them out of paying company-performance-based bonuses, as well as PTO and leave for people who were looking forward to a post-crunch break.
- AI. Executives, especially in creative fields, are salivating over the kinds of headcount reductions AI can provide.
- There are some relatively forward-thinking leaders who are looking at the economic landscape and figuring they need to conserve cash. Not say that's the case here, but it's a reason that some companies that aren't run by utter assholes are citing.
As someone who's been a Bungie fan since Pathways into Darkness (yeah, I'm that old) this makes me sad in a way that only the sale to Microsoft had managed.
To me, Bungie died a long time ago. The initial core imploded and they have just been awful in their pursuit of "success."
As a teenage Mac gamer in that time, I think I legitimately cried when Bungie sold out to MS.
These tweets read horrible. What a punch in the gut. And somehow it gets worse when Bungie lays off an employee days before maternity leave.
Bungie splits from Activision.
Releases Shadowkeep.
Shadowkeep: is awful.
Releases Beyond Light.
Marginally better with graphical improvements, but sunsetting content you paid for - so still pretty bad.
Releases Witch Queen.
Witch Queen is much better than both Shadowkeep and Beyond Light. Great ground floor, seemingly a starting point after the Activision split debacle.
Lightfall
Not only did Lightfall happen, we learned that most of the good content in Lightfall was purposefully removed from Witch Queen because they didn't want to 'overdeliver'.
Have not played Final Shape, don't know anything about it - mainly because I had enough of the game after the above. Bungie has been a terrible company for years. Do their devs deserve death threats for it? Absolutely not. Does the company deserve to crash and burn? Abso-fucking-lutely.