Bungie Devs Say Atmosphere Is ‘Soul-Crushing’ Amid Layoffs, Cuts, and Fear of Total Sony Takeover
Bungie Devs Say Atmosphere Is ‘Soul-Crushing’ Amid Layoffs, Cuts, and Fear of Total Sony Takeover
One month after a major round of layoffs impacted roughly 100 Bungie employees of 1,200, those remaining at the Destiny developer say the cuts, as well as other cost-cutting measures, came alongside an apparent scramble by studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover.
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Unfortunately this is just the norm when a company buys another. I give props to the employees thinking it is still Bungie, but it's not. The second that deal was finalized they became sony employees, and even if on paper they were still Bungie they were always going to become Sony employees.
But business swallows little business. And big business doesn't care about the jobs it leaves behind, or the people. Bungie as we knew it is dead
This isn't a case of Sony just "swallowing" a little business. As the article states Bungie board of directors is 2 people from Sony and 3 people from Bungie, which means that while Sony technically owns Bungie the Bungie leadership still makes decisions about how to run the company. Supposedly there's an obligation on Bungie's part to meet certain financial goals. If Bungie meets those goals Sony can't take over the company.
The problem is that Bungie isn't doing well financially. The Sony takeover is an outcome of Bungie not being able to stay financially independent. That means if Bungie wasn't under Sony then under the same conditions Bungie would most likely go bankrupt instead.
Bungie as we know it being dead has nothing to do with Sony. Bungie management has essentially killed Bungie.
Yes on paper that's how it's all laid out. However anyone who has been through a buyout knows that no parent company intends for the child company to act separately indefinitely. The shotgun clause in there saying they have to do well financially proves it to me. What company hasn't gone through hard times before? Sony may be playing the long game but they'll get control eventually, they always knew they would. It was inevitable that this would happen. Guarantee it was written this way probably with projections on when it would likely happen.
Which is why I say as soon as a buyout occurs the old company is gone. The cool culture you had, the lenient bosses, the small company style benefits? Gone. It may take a bit, but they're going away. Papa business is here and he only cares about the profit margin, not the people, not even the product. They may say it'll stay the same, but drip by drip the company will change, and a few years later you'll realize you aren't working for that cool smaller company anymore, you're working for the big corpos conglomerate.
I get being pessimistic especially since we don't know the details of Sony Bungie deal. But I think you're not aware how bad it's going at Bungie. Bungie has a huge burn rate according to Microsoft (they also tried to require Bungie and that was brought up as the biggest risk). Bungie missed their own revenue projections by 45%. When the layoffs happened some of the employees were told that the studio would be in great jeopardy if they were still independent.
Everything we know is pointing at Bungie possibly going bankrupt, if they were still independent. Sony swooping in is just Sony trying to save their 3,6 billion investment.
And I'm not sure why you're trying to paint a small tight-knit company of Bungie? They have 1000+ employees even after the layoffs. The biggest criticism at Glassdoor is the horrible management. Bungie has been slipping into corporatism well before Sony.