Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that layoffs at Bungie happened as an “apparent scramble by studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover.
IGN is reporting that the layoffs at Bungie happened as an “apparent scramble by studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover.
“If Bungie falls short of its revenue goals by too great an amount, Sony is allowed to dissolve the existing board and take full control of the company.”
According to those still with the company, employee frustration and sadness in the days and weeks following the layoffs was met with a surprising amount of indifference or even outright flippancy or hostility from management. Several people we spoke to told us that leaders had reiterated, across multiple meetings, that they couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be more layoffs, with two specifically confirming previous reports that chief people officer Holly Barbacovi outright stating that layoffs were a “lever” the company would pull again.
It 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
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