The layoffs Bungie announced yesterday hit nearly 300 staff who worked at the developer’s Bellevue, Washington office, official records have revealed.

A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice issued by Sony to the Washington State Employment Security Department, reported by Game File, reveals 292 staff have been let go with a formal separation date set for July 9. This number does not account for Bungie staff outside Washington state. It is unknown how many staff remain at Bungie following the cuts, although the studio was reported to have employed 850 staff as of 2024.

It is Bungie's third round of layoffs in three years. According to The Seattle Times, Bungie once had 1,000 employees in Bellevue, according to a 2023 annual financial report from the city. Between October 2023 and July 2024, Bungie laid off around 320 staff. Local press have called the cuts a "bloodbath."

In its statement yesterday, Hermen Hulst, CEO, Studio Business Group, Sony Interactive Entertainment, spoke about the layoffs in general terms, only saying a “significant” number of employees had been affected, hitting "most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members.”

Hulst described the decision as "difficult" and "painful," but "necessary to align the studio’s resources with its current priorities and long-term goals." The news follows the recent ending of new content for Destiny 2, and the release of hardcore extraction shooter Marathon, which has struggled for players. Sony has insisted it remains committed to Marathon, whose team is also said to be working on “incubation efforts for future projects.”

The WARN notice redacts individual names, but includes job titles. It reveals staff across all departments were hit, including artists and technical animators, audio leads and sound designers, engineers, producers, and systems designers, and integrated Sony support teams that manage day-to-day Bungie infrastructure.

A number of former Bungie staff have taken to social media to confirm they were hit by the layoffs. Some are Bungie veterans of over a decade. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said Bungie studio head Justin Truman, who succeeded Pete Parsons last year, had stepped down. According to Forbes reporter Paul Tassi, former Bungie VP of Operations, Poria Torkan, has reportedly taken charge of the studio.

Social media users have also picked up on the mention of “Chief Vision Officer” in the WARN notice. Some are speculating that this is Bungie co-founder and Halo and Destiny creator Jason Jones, who maintains a low profile and rarely speaks to the press. Jones appeared in an official Destiny 2 video released in 2021 in which he was described as Chief Vision Officer. If Jones has left Bungie — and this remains unconfirmed for now — it would represent a true end of an era for the studio behind some of the most iconic first-person shooters ever released.

Bungie has struggled financially for some time, and reportedly was on the brink of closure before Sony bought the studio back in 2022 for $3.6 billion. Sony recently reported a $765 million impairment loss due to underperformance of Bungie specifically.

Bungie's issues with Destiny 2 reportedly began around the time of last summer's Edge of Fate expansion, which was said to have underperformed. The decision to pull the plug was allegedly made "earlier this year" after it was decided not to relaunch the franchise as "Destiny Infinity."

Forbes reported that Bungie began discussing different scenarios about "what the future of Destiny 2 would look like" after December's Renegades, its Star Wars-themed crossover expansion, "did even worse [than Edge of Fate] and didn't change sales or retention trajectory."

Destiny Infinity would have been a relaunch alongside a return to the one big expansion model Destiny used to have, but the idea fell by the wayside after it was allegedly decided that the costs and risks were too high, especially in the context of support for Marathon.

Destiny 3 "was considered, as ever, but things didn't swing that way," and there has been no behind-the-scenes hints that a third Destiny game is coming, with the cost of the game's production cited as the key issue.

Destiny 2 launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 6, 2017, with a PC version following a month later. Behind the scenes, however, tension between Bungie and Activision emerged, and the two companies officially parted ways in January 2019, ending their 10-year publishing deal five years early.

With Destiny in its own hands, Bungie self-published the game, but it couldn't escape financial troubles and layoffs as Destiny 2 expansions failed to hit the mark and the player base dwindled. Extraction shooter Marathon launched early March, with a reported budget of more than $250 million. It too, according to analysts, has failed to meet sales expectations.

Photographer: Troy Harvey/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.