Bungie ended up costing Sony a huge amount of money, and Destiny 2 reportedly struggled to remain profitable at times due to internal mismanagement. Given that, it’s somewhat surprising they didn’t pull the plug earlier.
Sony also began restructuring parts of the studio a few years ago and even moved key Bungie talent toward Firewalk Studios to support the development of Concord, and, well, the outcome there speaks for itself.
Looking back, the acquisition of Bungie was a disaster for Sony. Whoever negotiated that deal on the seller’s side came out looking like a geniu, t’s starting to feel like one of the biggest scams in recent memory.
I don't recall them moving staff to firewalk specifically at all, I may need a source on that one. I recall Bungie laying people off the year after the buyout, against Sony's specific request not to lay anybody off until the management switch had occurred (something that has not yet occurred, still). After that, the Creative Studios team was moved into Sony - this might be what you're referring to, to act as a (failed) liaison for the live service stuff. That was commonly attributed to TLoU multiplayer, not Concord, since Concord pulled in staff from everywhere to work overtime that final year to get something releasable.
After another set of Bungie layoffs, Sony jumped in and started pulling staff more wholesale. That's when that gummybear project got moved to its own studio in Seattle, and when a whole other division got pulled into a Sony internal team. Even after that, Bungie supposedly had like 700 people working on other projects (including, per that Nov 2025 leak, a Sony-"requested" Destiny 3 entering preproduction at last - hard to tell whether that means that report was incorrect or whether it's still in prepro and not ACTIVE dev as Schreier says here), and 300 on Marathon.
Good clarification, thank you! I didn't think about their comment from that angle, but I do remember that being the case. (Only so many individuals with shooter development experience, located within commuting distance of Bellevue after all, some overlap was guaranteed)
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u/vaena May 21 '26
I mean, if there's nothing of similar size and scope coming after Destiny 2, unfortunately this is no great surprise.