It’s a sad case of another day, another round of mass layoffs at a game studio. On this occasion, Destiny developer Bungie has announced it is letting go of 220 employees, or 17% of its workforce. CEO Pete Parsons said the eliminations were due to “financial challenges,” which isn’t going down well, especially after it was discovered he may have spent over $2.4 million on classic cars after Sony acquired the company, and continued buying them even after the previous layoffs.
Bungie blames the job eliminations on “rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions.” The Sony subsidiary says it needs to make substantial changes to its cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon.
The cuts will impact every level of the company, including executives and senior leader roles – but not Parsons, obviously.
It was only in October 2023 that Bungie made its last round of layoffs, and the news comes just under two months since the launch of Destiny 2: The Final Shape, which has been well-received.
In December, Bungie devs told IGN that the atmosphere at the company was “soul-crushing” due to fears of more layoffs, extra cost-cutting measures, and a loss of all independence from Sony if Bungie’s financials did not improve. Staff said earlier this year that they feared more job cuts were coming.
The latest layoffs have led to many angry posts on social media from current and former Bungie employees. Destiny 2’s global community lead Dylan Gafner (AKA dmg04) called the move “inexcusable,” and noted that it’s a case of “Accountability falling upon the workers who have pushed the needle to deliver for our community time and time again.”
What’s angering people even further is the discovery of what seems to be Parsons’ account on a car bidding site called Bring a Trailer. It shows he has spent $2.4 million on classic cars since September 2022, which includes $500,000 since the October layoffs.
At the average American salary (approx. $60,000) Bungie could have employed 40 people for one year on what this guy spent on cars.
Probably significantly fewer. Here in the UK someone’s salary is about half of what it costs a business to employ them. It might be more than that in the USA but there will be other non-salary costs per employee.
Looks like the rule for the US is much different, only 1.25-1.4x the salary in total costs. That average salary is probably only correct for a junior employee though. But you can safely assume it’s around 100k at least per employee.
I appreciate the comment, but is 24 employees really that much better than 40? He spent the money on cars for crying out loud.
The most common number for fully burdened payroll in the US is around 120%. It’s very region, industry, and company specific though.
FWIW that is not the average salary in the tech industry.
removed, stop buying your metal scrap and pay your devs. I wanna play Marathon this century
I’m all for fixing the system but why does the employee CEO of company not get to spend his wages on whatever he wants just like the rest of us?
Was it company money he spent it on? Is he a maj shareholder?
The short of it is: why is he making that much money in the first place, especially at a time where the game’s industry has seen record-breaking layoffs for the past 2 years - worse than during the 2008 financial crash.
The long of it is that they’re symptoms of the same problem and show the ever increasing wealth disparity between the aristocracy and the commoners in the US. In 2020, the wealth disparity in the US was said to be on par with France just before the French Revolution, where the price of a loaf of bread hit a full day’s wages for the average worker. To add to this, at least one of the people laid off was going on scheduled maternity leave the next day, which is probably in violation of some workers’ rights law, but because the majority of states are “at will” employment states, Bungie won’t face any consequences. The average time for people in the industry to find a new job is 2-4 months, and with all the layoffs, plenty of these people will never work in the industry again. And on top of that, these workers are already exploited so badly for their passion for making games that they could see a 50% or more pay increase with lower responsibilities for the same skill set just by changing industries. There are people working at Activision-Blizzard-King who are living out of their cars because they don’t get paid enough to afford rent within commuting distance of the studio.
People are waking up to the fact that the boss makes 10 grand while we make a dime, and they’re getting pretty pissed about it.
People are pointing out the juxtaposition of many people losing their jobs while one person spends silly amounts of money on toys. It’s not that he spent it on toys, it’s that he made so much that he was able to waste it on frivolity while others around him suffered.
If the company is doing this poorly under his leadership, why is it be gets to keep his obscene pay while others lose their jobs, their healthcare and maybe their homes?
I’m beyond sick of our class structure.
That’s the thing, it might have been company funds. Back when Sony bought Bungie, they made a giant fund for severance in case of layoffs, so that devs would have a bit of a safety net if worst came to worst. Fast forward to October 30th, 2023, and that money is just… Gone with the wind. My facts may be a little muddled but I’m fairly certain that’s how it played out.
He should’ve resigned before anything else. His direction is what put the company into a shaky financial situation.
Maybe he’ll crash while driving one, and the limited safety features will ensure we’ll be rid of the asshole
… causing the board to hire another equally expensive CEO, – This time he’s into PLANES though!
What’s next after that? Someone into experimental submarines made of questionably reliable carbon fiber? Because I saw that movie before and uh, spoiler alert
It’s rockets for space tourism.
It would also be another thing is this was a “hero” CEO.
But… what has Bungie done that’s interesting besides Destiny? Was his plan was to just keep doing that?
Destiny was supposed to be their “forever” game, the problem is that after 2 dozen expansions:
- New players are extremely intimidated about joining
- Old players dislike losing the content they’ve paid for when it’s vaulted
- Long term players will eventually get bored of playing the same thing they’ve been playing for years
Live service games just won’t last forever like they want them to.
I’m fine with content being vaulted to make room for new content. What I have an issue with is when the new content isn’t even half of the quality of what they removed. I quit playing shortly after menagerie was removed for exactly that reason.
I exited with a “lol no” when I saw the state of lightfall. So glad I did.
It’s still a shame for the devs. Quite talented people, it’s once again a case of major management fuck up and devs paying the bill…
Quite talented people, it’s once again a case of major management fuck up and devs paying the bill…
Workers pay the price for mistakes made by the C-Suite.
not to mention their response to accounts hacked is “lol get fucked” they /might/ give you access but they refuse to do any rollbacks or anything even if it isn’t your fault. Shitty company with shitty practices. Was destined to fail eventually.
They do have a pretty sound reasoning for that though. Recoveries (which are services where someone better at the game than you logs into your account to play on your behalf) are a big thing in games like D2, and are also against their ToS. The tl;dr is that if you give your account information to someone and they play your game, and just so happen to cheat, that’s your fault for giving your information away.
Precisely.
Developing one MMO forever is not a great strategy, and I’d argue they aren’t executing it like the Warframe devs (which is its direct competitor I guess).
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Wanna know what’s even more sad? That 2.4m is only enough to pay for salary of 10 employees. This is salary, benefits, and additional respurce costs and personel usage. Basing this based on my friends who work for bungie and their salary is nothing enough for this areas cost of living.
That still doesn’t justify paying one person so much that his budget for shoving old cars in a garage is the pay for ten people who actually work
So instead of spending money on extravagant expenses they could have fired 5% less people this round… Compared to what the money is spent on that still sounds good.
Though it indeed makes little difference in the big picture, this is still a bad image.
My neighbor works for Bungie. I’m too afraid to ask if she still has a job. Getting laid off sucks but I bet working there still sucks too. I bet their office is a fuckin graveyard.
The morale nosedive that layoffs bring means the loss of company productivity is so much higher than just who you let go. They have to be the absolute last resort. Pete Parsons has to go.
We had layoffs earlier this year, and I don’t know if they were absolutely necessary, but the financial situation was admittedly not good at all.
Since then we’ve lost some of the best and most talented coworkers I had, and morale is only just now recovering it feels like.
You might wish to just ask her in passing, “hey, I heard what’s going on at Bungie, is everything okay?” Whether she does or doesn’t still have a job, she is probably stressed as hell and could probably use some kind words.
Mythic Quest CEO Level Achieved.
Next up, stories of inappropriate conduct leak and somebody tiger’s a camero.
I just cannot fathom this absolutely brainlet, short-term thinking. Yeah, these people have created some of the best content we’ve ever made (according to player feedback). Let’s fucking fire them all!
When did “investing” die and rise as a revenant obsessed with burning down the building to get one more penny? Do billionaires know something we don’t and are burning everything down because the planet’s gonna explode?
It’s because of the MBA class of people. They cannot innovate. They are bizzaro engineers, rather than improve and solve problems while making new products, they take existing labor and ideas, destroy them and the company attached, and somehow collect money.
The fastest way to make money is to buy a company, liquidate its assets, and sell off the IP.
There needs to be a legal minimum time for investment.
You bought part of a company? Great!
You can sell in 10 years.
Guys, all of you are being really mean. Do you know how many cars he would have to give up buying if he didn’t lay all those employees off?
At least one. Probably.
The 2.4 million are company money. Money that he had no right to spend on himself be it cars or otherwise.
Please elaborate on your comment, because it makes no sense to me.
He bought himself luxury sports cars using company money under the guise of “company car”.
Hiding your assets behind a corporate veil is a relatively common form of fraud and tax evasion for rich people.
TAX THE FUCKING RICH!!!
70% of that $2.4 million should have been taxed and he can do whatever he wants with the remaining money. OR he can get paid what he actually deserves and leave the rest for the company to become stronger.
70% of that $2.4 million should have been taxed
It’s literally post-tax income already, lol.
Ok, I get it, 70% of what he earned should have been taken in taxes instead of the abysmal 37% minus all the deductions that generally only apply only to the rich. Point remains the same. Tax these fuckers.
That just illustrates a more fundamental problem
You lot are constantly talking about how workers are uniformly short-changed on their labor by their employers, underpaid for it and therefore being a profit source for employers, but you never explain why any business would do layoffs like this if that was the case, lol. Do these people who got laid off make the company money or not?
HERE is some information regarding these companies and CEOs that you are stupidly and disgustingly sticking up for. Hope that helps.
You lot
Very interested in who “you lot” refers to when you’ve had a different commenter every reply in this thread.
Do these people who got laid off make the company money or not?
What’s your position here? That labour isn’t exploited and undervalued by the people who profit off it? That if was, no one ever would be sacked? These companies usually go through phases of hiring talent when they predict they need more labour done (ie when they want to increase profit).
Seems like Bungie haphazardly acquired more talent than it needed, presumably under the assumption that the company would grow indefinitely. It didn’t. So what’s the easiest and shittiest way to bring the company ledger out of the red?? You guessed it, sack them. There’s also a bit of an upset at the idea of paying executives million dollar salaries, then sacking hundreds of actually productive employees.
sacking hundreds of actually productive employees.
If they were “actually productive”, sacking them would hurt the bottom line, not help it.
Yeah no. If that was all you managed to get from my reply then it isn’t worth continuing this discussion.
I guess the final shape ended up being a garage full of cars that will never be driven.
This is exactly correctly astute
Man as a long term destiny player, this has just been heartbreaking. The latest expansion was absolutely amazing and you could tell the devs really put their heart and soul into it. And now a lot of them are gone. The narrative leads, longtime leaders of the franchise, all canned.
Rumors about what’s upcoming suggest a major downsizing in the content that’s going to come out for players too. So I’m not even sure how they plan on continuing to make money.
Fuck Parsons.
I know it’s a long shot, but I sincerely hope that if (when) Sony takes over management at Bungie, they at least try to hire back some of their talent that worked on TFS.
Same :(
It just seems like it’s dug it’s own grave so effectively that there’s no way to climb out.
In theory I love their aim of player retention, but they focused on it so exclusively that it became a challenge to start playing, or to come back. The new player experience isn’t just bad or non-existent, it’s basically actively hostile. Most of the story content isn’t accessible anymore, so you’re depending on dozens of hours of Youtube videos to catch up on a decade of in-jokes that you can’t experience. It’s like Eve, but worse because it was written, not just player interaction lore. Even as someone who played D1 and the first few years of D2, looking at current screenshots and trailers is alienating. They’ve revamped and juggled currencies and what power levels are so much that basically nothing is the same.
The pivot to seasons/microtransactions while ignoring recruitment of new players was a wild choice.
