It's happening again, Guardians. Bungie has confirmed yet another round of layoffs, this time hitting both the Destiny 2 and the long-awaited Marathon development teams, according to Destructoid. The cuts appear to have come down from Sony, which acquired Bungie back in 2022 for a cool $3.6 billion - a purchase that is looking increasingly cursed with every passing quarter.
Another respawn denied
This isn't Bungie's first rodeo with the pink slip pistol. The studio already went through a brutal round of cuts in 2024, shedding roughly 220 employees in what felt like a gut punch to the whole industry. Now it seems the final boss - corporate restructuring - has returned for a second phase, and the studio's two biggest projects are caught in the crossfire.
The fact that Marathon is getting hit is particularly rough. The extraction shooter has been one of Bungie's big bets for the future, meant to diversify the studio beyond its aging Destiny franchise. Watching a game lose devs before it even ships is basically a death flag in any RPG - you do NOT want to see that debuff applied.
Sony's dark shadow looms large
Destructoid's reporting frames the layoffs as coming from above, pointing the finger squarely at Sony's influence over the studio. This fits a pattern we've seen across PlayStation's wider portfolio, where the parent company has been tightening the screws on its first-party and acquired studios amid broader gaming industry pressures.
For Destiny 2 players already anxious about the game's future after the divisive The Final Shape era and some seriously rocky seasonal content drops, this is not the kind of news that inspires confidence. Fewer developers usually means slower updates, and in a live service game, slow updates are basically a server shutdown in slow motion.
What this means for the loot cave going forward
The big question now is whether Marathon can survive its development cycle intact enough to actually compete in the brutally competitive extraction shooter market. Rivals like Escape from Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown aren't exactly sitting still while Bungie figures out its org chart.
The situation at Bungie is giving serious 'final raid boss with no checkpoint' energy, and right now it's not clear the studio has enough players left in the fireteam to see it through. Our thoughts go out to everyone affected by these cuts.
