It’s a powerful time for Bungie and Destiny 2, with dad or mum firm Sony saying the studio has failed to satisfy its gross sales and person engagement expectations.
In its newest monetary report, Sony mentioned it had recorded a 31.5 billion yen (approx. $204.2 million) impairment cost as a results of Destiny 2’s underperformance. That was important sufficient to tug down income at Sony’s Recreation & Community Companies Phase, which incorporates Sony Interactive Leisure.
Sony chief monetary officer (CFO) Lin Tao, expanded on the points with Bungie in an investor associated monetary name:
“Relating to Destiny 2, partially attributable to the modifications in the aggressive setting, the degree of gross sales and person engagement haven’t reached the expectations we had at the time of the acquisition of Bungie. Whereas we are going to proceed to make enhancements, we downwardly revised the enterprise projection for the time being, and recorded an impairment loss in opposition to a portion of the property at Bungie.”
It’s actually been a powerful time for Destiny 2 and Bungie, which is engaged on the delayed extraction shooter Marathon for a launch in 2026.
In August, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons left the firm after 23 years and practically 10 as CEO. He was succeeded by Justin Truman, beforehand chief growth officer and fellow Bungie veteran. Parsons oversaw Bungie throughout many turbulent years, first taking on as CEO in 2016 from Harold Ryan and overseeing its break from Activision in 2019. He was at the helm all through lots of the occasions catalogued in our 2021 expose of Bungie’s inner work tradition. Simply months after our report, Bungie was acquired by Sony for $3.7 billion, ending the studio’s flirtation with independence.
Sony, clearly, noticed one thing in Bungie and its upcoming slate. However as the acquisition settled in, considerations started to come up about the studio’s future. Destiny 2 was struggling, and Marathon was nonetheless years away. Then the layoffs got here. In 2023, Bungie laid off roughly 100 people and delayed Destiny 2’s The Ultimate Form DLC, with Parsons taking accountability for the cuts. Builders instructed IGN at the time that the environment at Bungie was “soul-crushing” as fears grew of a whole Sony takeover of the firm. In 2024, this was adopted up with much more layoffs, impacting 220 individuals regardless of The Ultimate Form’s success. 155 individuals have been additionally built-in from Bungie into Sony at the moment. In the wake of these layoffs, former staff claimed Bungie misrepresented its funds and had considerably overextended itself when Sony acquired the studio. It was apparently dangerous sufficient that at the least one supply described as a “well-connected former employee” went up to now as to assert that Bungie confronted dire penalties if the acquisition hadn’t occurred, saying that the “alternate historical past is insolvency.”
Troubles continued to rock the studio by way of the remainder of 2024 and into 2025, with Marathon seeing a delay out of September of this 12 months to an unknown future date. Most not too long ago, Sony confirmed Bungie can be built-in into PlayStation Studios so the firm may have extra management over the developer.
Destiny 2 has seen its participant rely plummet as updates have did not hit the mark. The motion shooter hit a new low on Steam this month, with a peak concurrent participant rely of 13,497 in the previous 24 hours. In June final 12 months it hit 314,000. Latest person opinions for Destiny 2 on Steam are ‘principally unfavorable,’ though total opinions are ‘principally constructive.’ Steam doesn’t paint the total image with regards to Destiny 2’s reputation, with it broadly obtainable throughout a number of platforms, however clearly Sony isn’t proud of how the studio has carried out in the three years because it introduced it into the fold.
Again in June, Sony mentioned it remained dedicated to stay service video video games regardless of high-profile failures such as Harmony, and insisted Marathon can be out earlier than April 2026 regardless of the combined alpha suggestions and damaging accusations of plagiarism in opposition to Bungie.
Sony shall be eager to keep away from one other catastrophic launch like Harmony, which was pulled offline simply two weeks after launch, with one estimate suggesting it bought simply 25,000 copies. It has proved a pricey failure for Sony, with a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} wasted amid the closure of its developer, Firewalk Studios. Bungie now faces concern over its personal future, with the strain on Marathon to ship.
Picture by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP by way of Getty Photographs.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.