Just over a week after Destiny 2 received what Bungie has called its final major content update, reports are mounting that the studio is about to go through one of the most significant rounds of layoffs in its history — potentially cutting half its workforce, alongside a wave of senior leadership departures expected in July.
How This Started: The End of Destiny 2
Bungie’s final content update for Destiny 2, called Monument of Triumph, released on June 9, closing out nearly a decade of ongoing support for the game. Bungie has said the game’s servers will stay online, but development has effectively wound down, with no new major content planned. The studio does not currently have a greenlit successor lined up, and according to Bloomberg’s earlier reporting on the matter, the development team that worked on Destiny 2 doesn’t have a new project to move onto once that work ends.
That timing matters, because the end of active development on a flagship game without a replacement project queued up is exactly the kind of situation that tends to precede layoffs in the games industry, and several journalists with track records covering Bungie specifically say that’s exactly what’s happening now.
What’s Being Reported
French journalist Sylvain Trinel, writing for BFM TV, reported on June 16 that Bungie should expect layoffs affecting at least 50 percent of its workforce this summer, covering both permanent and contract staff. Given that Bungie has roughly 800 employees, that would put the number of job losses at around 400 people — more than double the scale of the studio’s previous layoff round in July 2024, when roughly 220 staff, or about 17 percent of the studio, were let go.
Forbes’ Paul Tassi, who covers Bungie and Destiny closely, partially corroborated the report without committing to a specific number. Tassi wrote that the cuts will be “significant,” reasoning that Bungie doesn’t have a greenlit new project and can’t realistically absorb hundreds of additional developers onto Marathon, its other major title. Tassi added that some long-tenured Bungie leadership and original staff members are likely to leave around July, which he linked to the timing of Sony’s acquisition-related compensation vesting for many of those employees.
Neither Bungie nor Sony has issued an official statement confirming the scale or timing of any layoffs as of this writing.
Why Bungie Is Under This Much Pressure
Two separate financial problems are converging here. The first is Destiny 2 itself: the game’s content pipeline has ended, and while a fan-driven push for a Destiny 3 has reportedly gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures on a petition, no sequel has been greenlit. The second is Marathon, Bungie’s other major project and a PvP extraction shooter that the studio bet heavily on, which has reportedly struggled to sustain its early audience since launching earlier this year.
Sony’s own financial disclosures reflect how costly that bet has become. According to multiple outlets citing Bloomberg’s reporting, Sony recorded an impairment loss against Bungie’s asset value of roughly $765 million, representing more than 20 percent of the $3.6 billion Sony paid to acquire the studio back in 2022. Some reporting breaks that write-down into two separate charges: one tied to Destiny 2’s ongoing underperformance, and a second, larger charge recorded after Marathon’s launch failed to hold its early player base.
Part of a Bigger Industry Pattern
Bungie’s situation isn’t happening in isolation. It comes during the same stretch in which Xbox has been negotiating the fates of several of its own studios, including Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Double Fine, all of which are reportedly trying to avoid closure under what Xbox has internally called a “Reset.” Trinel, the same journalist who first reported on the Bungie numbers, was also an early source on the Xbox studio situation, and has separately warned of a broader industry “bloodbath” expected to hit around July 1 — though he’s been notably cautious about which specific studios beyond Bungie might be affected, at one point publicly redirecting speculation away from the studios commentators were already guessing at.
The scale of this moment, if the reporting holds up, would be unusual even by the games industry’s recent standards. Independent tracking cited in industry coverage has put total games-industry job losses at roughly 45,000 between 2022 and mid-2025, and the Game Developers Conference’s 2026 State of the Game Industry report found that one in three U.S. game development workers had been laid off in just the past two years. That’s happening at the same time the industry as a whole posted record content revenue, a disconnect that’s become a recurring theme in coverage of this round of cuts.
What’s Confirmed vs. What’s Still a Rumor
To be clear about what’s solid and what isn’t: it’s confirmed that Destiny 2’s major content development has ended, that Marathon has underperformed expectations, and that Sony has taken a substantial financial impairment tied to Bungie. The 50 percent staff reduction figure, however, currently traces back to a single journalist’s sourcing, partially corroborated by a second reporter who declined to confirm an exact number. Until Bungie or Sony makes an official statement, the scale of the cuts — and exactly which roles or teams will be affected — remains unconfirmed.
We’ll update this piece if Bungie or Sony issues any formal statement on the matter.