Report: Major layoffs to hit Bungie and Destiny 3 is not in development

Bungie looks set to undergo a major round of layoffs following the announced end of active development on Destiny 2, it has been reported, with no new game in production at this time. Destiny 3 is not currently in the works.

While Sony is yet to comment on the report by Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, he writes that, following the release of the final content update for Destiny 2 on 9th June, Bungie is planning “a significant number of layoffs”. The number of job losses is not known at this time, but this is primarily down to the studio not having a major new game in production.

It’s an awful situation to face, and we wish all those that will be affected the best in finding new employment or roles elsewhere within PlayStation Studios.

Bungie’s staff are trying to pitch and start development on new projects, but none have been greenlit at this time, and so the only home for Destiny 2 staff within Bungie is to move across to the live support of the recently released Marathon, and some staff were moved across in recent months. That game launched in March and has found a loyal following, but has not met sales expectations, and so cannot support the size of operation that Destiny 2 enjoyed at its peak. The hope will be that the studio is able to grow the player base over time, of course.

The obvious move, from the outside, would be to start work on Destiny 3. From various rumours, Bungie has repeatedly flirted with the idea of a sequel or spin-off, but backed off every time. Back in 2024, following the release of Destiny 2: The Final Shape and a previous round of layoffs at the studio, it was reported that a Destiny spin-off game had been in the works with Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, key figures from Destiny 2’s early revival, at its helm. With their game, codenamed Payback, cancelled, they departed the studio. Further reports and rumours came late last year that, with Bungie acknowledging that Destiny 2 needed a new direction, they were starting on the early work of developing a full Destiny 3 sequel.

Per Schreier, Destiny 3 simply isn’t happening and, “The answer (as it usually is) is how much money it would take.”

Over the last few years, Sony has taken greater command of how Bungie operates, having originally purchased the studio with the promise to give them great autonomy if they continued to perform at pre-2022 levels. During this period, Bungie has sought to branch out and found new projects, similar to how Marathon grew from an ‘incubation’ project. Some of these, such as Payback, were shutdown, but others have continued… just not at Bungie. In May last year, Sony took one of these teams and projects and spun it off into TeamLFG. Of course, this again plays into the problem that faces the Destiny 2 team now, as they have no other projects to move across to.

In their most recent financial reports, Sony has written down the value of Bungie by $765 million USD. They originally paid $3.6 billion.

Inevitably people are looking for someone to take the blame for all of this. Former Bungie writer Robert Brookes, who was laid off from the company in 2024, quipped on social media, “it turns out the real destiny killer was pete parsons”.

An infamously avid classic car collector, Parsons stepped down in late 2025 following significant delays to the release of Marathon and an indifferent reception to Destiny 2: Edge of Fate, which has turned out to be the game’s final major expansion.

Tags: Bungie, Destiny 2, Destiny 3, layoffs, Playstation, Sony