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Bungie Devs Say Atmosphere Is ‘Soul-Crushing’ Amid Layoffs, Cuts, and Fear of Total Sony Takeover - IGN (www.ign.com)

submitted 6 months ago by Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] Alk@lemmy.world 37 points 6 months ago

How far they've fallen since halo. It's very sad.

[-] MacedWindow@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

I had a Destiny poster on my wall back when all we knew was the name of the game and a bit of promotional art. We named our cat Bungie. So yeah, I'm pretty sad about the current state of things.

[-] nul9o9@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I was listening to some Halo 3/ODST OST's, it was very bittersweet thinking about what we had.

[-] BigVault@kbin.social 25 points 6 months ago

Sadly I lost interest in the game once they decided to remove content I’d paid for.

Gutting to see the developers suffer like this as I doubt they’re the ones making the shit decisions but are the ones taking all the hits with the layoffs.

[-] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 20 points 6 months ago

was with this threat looming that Bungie leadership - not Sony, according to Parsons - made the choice to lay off roughly 100 employees last month.

But the cost-cutting at Bungie isn’t limited to just personnel. Multiple current employees confirmed to IGN that the company has implemented numerous other cost-cutting measures recently, including a studio-wide hiring freeze, reduced travel budgets, elimination of holiday bonuses, keeping its annual Bungie Day virtual, delaying its weeklong company “Pentathalon” event to next December, and reducing numerous morale events such as cooking and knitting classes from monthly to quarterly. Bungie is also pausing or fully ending benefits like annual employee compensation adjustments to meet market rates, its new hire lunch program, employee donation matching, its peer recognition program, and gift cards for employees birthdays.

[-] Aremel@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

So Bungie is officially dead

[-] BrowseMan@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 months ago

Whouah, okay so all the good things removed.

Fuck the employees I guess?

[-] harry_balzac@lemmy.world 19 points 6 months ago

So...Bungies leadership is worried that Sony will completely take over, so they're making it into a dumpster fire?

That'll only mean that Sony will take over and fire the Bungie executives making these decisions, giving them generous severance packages on top of all the bonuses they'll give themselves for cutting costs...wait, I think I figured it out.

[-] Marsupial@quokk.au 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

If Bungie falls short of certain financial thresholds by too great an amount, Sony is allowed to dissolve the existing board and take full control of the company.

Also the article mentions the board being split 50/50 between Sony and Bungee, with 1 tie breaker. So I don’t think they’re trying to hand it over to Sony when they could’ve just done that at any stage without a convoluted scheme.

[-] echo64@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago

Tbh, sony needs to take over. Sony seem to do okay with their stuff, and Bungie leadership seems to be totally at fault.

They must have the most wild buyout contract for Sony to not be able to just swoop in and fix this nonsense.

[-] Shadywack@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Looks like some c-level dweeb or scab sympathizer downvoted your comment. I couldn't agree more with your assessment. Bungie leadership is pretty much miserable assholes these days. It sucks for the developers who do the actual work and are trying to tell leadership what will actually fix the company. They don't deserve any of the frustrations from any of the player base, but the executives can fuck themselves with splintered balsa wood for all I care.

[-] sarcasticsunrise@lemm.ee 9 points 6 months ago

I'm sure they had a reason to do it, but why the hell did they leave Microsoft again??? Working under Sony sounds miserable

[-] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

Working for Microsoft doesn't seem to be all sunshine and rainbows either, according to some firsthand accounts I've heard.

[-] OscarRobin@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

None of the things happening at Bungie are related to Sony at all, as the article states

[-] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah, Sony gave Bungie a pretty sick deal. Bungie gets financial backing from Sony and if Bungie doesn't drive itself into the ground they keep their autonomy, and I guess the main benefit Sony got is/was live service expertise from Bungie (which is what Sony was focusing on when they acquired Bungie). The fact that Sony might need to step in is all on Bungie and it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has been keeping up with Bungie. The short gist is that the entire company is horribly mismanaged and that's why they had to lay off and are likely to get taken over by Sony.

And if I'm being honest, I think Sony takeover might be the best thing for Bungie (assuming it doesn't get entirely dissolved). Get rid of the shit management and then, once you've put some reasonable people at the helm, let them do their own thing again.