The ending of Destiny 2’s live-service content and reported impending layoffs is a subject of “cruel math” when it comes to money.
That’s according to Forbes’ Paul Tassi, who cited sources at Bungie in response to a report yesterday from French journalist Sylvain Trinel that said Bungie will be laying off “50 percent” of its workforce this summer, and that there’s an air of “revenge” at Sony in that come of the higher-ups blame Bungie for PlayStation’s live-service failings this generation.
According to Tassi’s sources, the “revenge” angle is nonsense.
“It is obvious to everyone Bungie has not performed well and it is not exactly Sony’s golden child,” he said. “But this idea that Sony is blaming Bungie for Concord and all the rest of the live stuff is a huge reach. Sony isn’t doing this to ‘punish’ Bungie for some transgression via its live service plans or game underperformance.”
Tassi added that “no one at Bungie has any belief this is some ‘revenge’ idea,” but instead that the assumed upcoming layoffs and potential restructuring is all about money.
“This is almost entirely financial, simply Destiny 2 cost more than it made,” he said. “Math. Cruel math, but math.”
That math must take into account Sony’s $3.6 billion acquisition of the studio that made Destiny and the original Halo games, and it’s apparent that the company does not think the investment has been worth it up to this point, especially with the commercial failure of Bungie’s newest project, Marathon. Sony itself said it was acquiring the studio for its expertise in live-service games, and that has been a colossal failure in general for PlayStation this generation.
The decision to incubate Marathon while winding down Destiny is still a head-scratcher to many, myself included, but there’s obviously some red lines in financial reports that is leading these sort of decisions to be made. I fear for the future of both franchises, along with those who work at Bungie.
