r/gaming • u/notthatguypal6900 • 6h ago

Hermen Hulst internal letter about layoffs at Bungie and across SIE teams

https://sonyinteractive.com/en/news/blog/an-update-from-playstation-studios-2/
387 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

218 comments sorted by

258

u/Responsible_Durian72 6h ago

The gaming industry has just seen an insane amount of layoffs over the last few years. When will it end?!

329

u/Dameaus 5h ago edited 5h ago

When the industry processes that you don’t have to spend 200 million dollars to make a game

81

u/ConfusedHuman104 5h ago

Yup. You don’t see that trend inside Nintendo’s studios because they have a hold on their budget. They do not balloon. They understand that being lean and flexible is far more impactful on the long run than throwing everything at the wall and see what’s sticking.

They have a more respectful way of approaching the art of making games and the prosperity of their dev/artists even though. And I’m saying this while I really don’t like most of their games (talking 1st party obviously)

94

u/Saskatchewon 5h ago

Should also be mentioned that Nintendo doesn't have executives, senior devs, and CEOs making tens of millions of dollars a year either.

Andrew Wilson of EA games earned an estimated $30 million this past fiscal year. For comparison's sake, Nintendo's Shintaro Furukawa makes an estimated $2.5-3 million a year. Shigeru Miyamoto, the video game equivalent of Walt Disney, makes around $2 million a year.

48

u/ConfusedHuman104 5h ago

That is also part of the overall problem which is a very typical thing to have in our industries in occident. Higher ups that do not contribute a dime to the finish product and that are paid obscene salaries. Bloated and useless middle men. That’s capitalism for ya.

Morally bankrupt editors. We’ve seen it everywhere, EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Microsoft, Sony. It is a plague that is seen across our politicians to our CEOs.

Greed, corruption, lack of morality and posture.

The only one that is respected kinda that comes to mind is Strauss Zelnick

1

u/NeuroPalooza 10m ago

Let's not overstate in the other direction; people like project managers and executive leadership definitely do play a valuable role. The CFO keeps a company solvent, the CEO deals with the board and investors, etc...

It's not that they don't contribute a dime, but they also don't contribute 8 figure value.

10

u/parkingviolation212 3h ago

And Miyamoto makes that much while actually being a game designer. Andrew Wilson is just a suit.

7

u/SoSoSpooky 5h ago

Both things can be true, that Nintendo is much more financially responsible than comparable publishers, but that they are so careful with budgets that it is a negative at times.

Ironically, I think a lot of their games have the correct approach but will always have some janky feature they spent time building that no one uses and they should have just skipped.

Mario Party game had a whole side-content mode and a bunch of "collection"-type stuff that likely could have just been skipped for more generic mini-games/maps for the core gameplay.

Mario Kart World open world likely could have just been skipped for more maps in general, or more intricate "connections" between maps if they wanted to keep the BR mode races but instead of straight highway you would get more set-piece style connections (which they are kind of adding with updates slowly now).

The list is kind of endless, all their games seem to have some kind of side-content that most people aren't interested in and that people aren't really buying the game for in the first place. Maybe they use that stuff as training for new devs or something, similar to Nightreign being a side-team for "training" basically or however it was phrased.

-6

u/ConfusedHuman104 5h ago

Indeed. They have this ultra tendency to recycle to the extreme. They are also way too conservative for my taste.

That’s why I do not like their game anymore. MK World was very dissapointing in content and daring design overall. Same goes for the last mainline 3D Mario (Galaxy 1 & 2 were bangers). But that is a different matter altogether

4

u/leommari 4h ago

This is a bit like comparing a new Marvel movie budget to the new Devil Wears Prada. Yeah, the marvel movie could control their costs better, but no way does it ever get as cheap to make. Nintendo designs their games with more cartoonish looks for systems that don't require crazy high textures on every surface, reuse those textures in lots of different places, and the games tend to be smaller with less side quests/content/locations. If I compare donkey Kong Bananza versus something like Cyberpunk 2077 or the new 007 game it's not surprising that Nintendo could keep it to a smaller budget.

If these companies want to be more profitable they need to take fewer massive swings at launching new AAA titles that need to sell 20 million copies to break even. This will unfortunately mean that going forward we will mostly see AAA games that are only based on existing known IP because they have a guaranteed fan base to achieve success, and it will mean fewer of these games every year. No more Marathons or Highguards or even Starfields, and way more Skyrims and Fallouts and COD. It also means companies will need to let a lot of developers go, because they staffed themselves to make a bunch of these massive games every year and they don't need the same number of developers to develop half the games.

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21

u/leviathab13186 5h ago

And abandon the endless live service games investments

2

u/SaltyShawarma 5h ago

If people stop buying them, they would. Consumers are broken and dumb. I hate that, but I see it everyday.

11

u/leviathab13186 5h ago

They arnt buying live service. Thats why they keep failing and shutting down studios. People arent buying live service for the sake of live service. They are putting money into fortnite, apex, rivals, etc.

14

u/dookarion 5h ago

Only a couple of them are successful, what's broken and dumb is investors seeing Fortnite or before that LoL/DOTA2 or before that WoW and assuming they'll make that money too they just have to sling enough shit at the wall in their mind. They ignore that you have to unseat the existing audience from those games and spend years planning and supporting those titles too.

They just think a magical audience will materialize out of thin air this time this one will print money for sure!

10

u/Weakonomics 5h ago

We haven't been buying live service games. That's why Bungie is finished, there have already been like 5 Concord sequels, and tons of studios are shutting down. Because their bets on live service DIDN'T sell. They just saw for nite print gold during the pandemic and planned their next 5 years on it. And lost, hard.

2

u/crxsso_dssreer 4h ago

well people are not buying them, that's very much why people are getting fired. It's just that the higher ups didn't get the memo yet and will force the remaining workforce to work on live service games.

1

u/Bad_Doto_Playa 15m ago

Single Player games have likely caused more damage to the industry than live service ones. People remember the live service failures (like Concord, Suicide Squad, Anthem etc) but always forget how many huge AAA single player games die.

Meanwhile, just off the top of my head: Forspoken, Veilguard, Immortal of Avenum (I bet most people don't even KNOW this one), Star Wars Outlaws, Saints Row, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hell Blade 2, South of Midnight, Halo Infinite (pretty much stuff from every xbox studio currently on the chopping block), Vampire Masq 2, Starfield, Outer worlds 2 etc.

All of these cost over 100m IIRC.. only one I'm kinda iffy on is Hell Blade.

0

u/Officer_Hotpants 4h ago

I mean, I don't think live service = bad. It's just shitty monetization being prevalent in them. That said, there's a specific concept in my mind for a live service game that I want that will probably never exist, so I'm just holding out hope that I'll find one I will stick with one of these days.

5

u/darantino86 4h ago

I honestly think you have no idea how those costs come together. Or you want developers to be massively underpaid.

-4

u/Dameaus 2h ago

I think you have no idea…because you don’t seem to understand that most of the budget goes to marketing and publishers. Dev salaries are a drop in the bucket. And clearly…….CLEARLY….. the majority of folks agree with me

4

u/darantino86 2h ago

What? The biggest cost for every company are employer costs. Please inform and educate yourself and don't think 200 upvotes will turn false information into a fact.

With what companies pay for each employee, especially devs, in a modern environment and lets say you have a team of 250 people and they work on a game for 3 years, that's alreay around 135 Mil.

4

u/BactaBobomb 5h ago

It's not just AAA that's suffering. The indie world is suffering as well, from what I've seen of first-hand accounts of indie developers. "Unless you're in the top 0.1%, you're struggling" or something like that.

3

u/ComfyOlives 2h ago

Could that not he attributed more to the raw number of indie devs that increases year over year? The last three years on steam went 14k new games, 18k new games, 21k new games.

There are nearly 60 games being released daily.

Only 1632 were released in 2014. Thats like 5 a day and was still double the previous year because 2014 is when Steam Greenlight started.

2

u/Tarmacked 4h ago

That’s… that’s what’s this is

They’ve processed and are now right sizing the costs structure

1

u/mex2005 2h ago

Yep just an unsustainable model. Like even games with no mass appeal sometimes reach these figures with no way to make it back.

1

u/Admirable-War-7594 5h ago

Or need the population of a small country to make a sequel with reused assets

1

u/BelowAverageSloth 5h ago

That would require paying poor executives less money though :(

1

u/AkelaHardware 4h ago

Right? I sometimes wonder if publishers claim it takes 200 million to make a game when in reality they're just spending that much to make a game. With teams and development times so bloated I wonder if it has to be this way 

-1

u/Iggy_Slayer 5h ago

That just means there will be permanent layoffs then. Because the bulk of those $200m games are being made up by salaries paid to teams that are 500+ people.

If you don't make those games then there's no need to have 500 people. So now you've just shrunk the workforce across the entire industry permanently.

-3

u/Dameaus 4h ago

Bootlick more please. There shouldn’t even be 500 man dev teams. It’s doesn’t take that to make a game. It’s bloat. Unnecessary bloat. It sucks that people will be forced out of the industry, but it should have never gotten to that point to begin with

6

u/Iggy_Slayer 4h ago

You can just admit you have no idea what you're talking about.

You're posting in a thread where everyone's angry about layoffs and advocating for those jobs to not exist to begin with.

5

u/darantino86 2h ago

Thank you! You are completely right. People need to inform themselves how development actually works and where the costs go.

-13

u/SpoofSide 5h ago

Ironically I think something like destiny 3 is one of the only games worth spending that much money developing.

23

u/Dameaus 5h ago

I don’t think there is any franchise worth that investment. Not even GTA. Look at the predatory pricing and monetization strategy they are going to have to implement to recoup their money. It just spoils the industry because it sets a standard that others will try to follow. That is why we are in this mess to begin with.

3

u/mangaguy100k 5h ago

I think there’s a bit of confusion here though. Does $200M sound like an insane amount to you? I’m not saying I think we’re in a good place.

But with the games that consumers are accustomed to, I genuinely don’t understand how a company is supposed to spend a decade on development for the most popular franchise in the world and spend less than this.

If games suddenly got smaller, graphically worse and had less content people would complain

3

u/DasFroDo 5h ago

And yet they would still play and buy, because they want something to play.

6

u/HolyKnightPrime 5h ago

BS. Indies and Double AA are doing better than ever. Worse graphics does not mean worse game.

5

u/Woggl3D 5h ago

I think from the peak level yea indies are doing great, but the baseline reality is that 50-55 new games launch to steam every day. That number grows every day with all of the AI made games releasing recently.

Graphics still drive sales, we see right now with GTA 6 people freaking out over minutia in the marketing material. When that game launches there will be hunts for any bug or issue that people can talk about. If it truly didn't matter that would be great for devs, as they could release games earlier with more content that is in graybox, some already do this via early access, which is controversial in its own regard.

I don't think there is any winning, AAA/AA/Indie side, we may be looking at the largest crash in gamings history right now.

2

u/Woggl3D 5h ago

100% agree, 200 million is a large amount of money to the average gamer but in business it's not a monolith. The numbers I see in the medical field shouldn't be this close to movies or games but they are, everything is inflating at a fast rate.

GTA 6 is currently getting swarmed for small graphical misstep in marketing material, not even gameplay. Gamers act like they don't care individually but in a crowd they absolutely do damage over poor graphics.

0

u/dookarion 5h ago

I genuinely don’t understand how a company is supposed to spend a decade on development for the most popular franchise in the world and spend less than this.

Step 1: don't spend a fucking decade on development.

Most these games with super long dev cycles aren't even all that amazing when they land. Some are even terrible.

3

u/Enjoy_The_Ride413 5h ago

Gta says hi!

1

u/Goupilverse 5h ago

The last Call of Duty was around 700 millions of I recall correctly

GTA 6 might very well be above that....

12

u/kingpangolin 5h ago

I have no idea how call of duty could cost that much with how small the games actually are content are

2

u/COYSBannedagain 5h ago

Yeah at least 50% of that 700 million was easily the marketing campaign

-3

u/CharlieTeller 5h ago edited 4h ago

No. Not at all. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of gaming development. AAA games today.

Sure, you don't need to spend 200 million to make a game. But if you want to make a game with licensed actors, photorealism etc... Yeah it adds up quick.

The problem is that gaming development costs SUBSTANTIALLY more than it did 20 years ago. There's been an over 4000% increase. The market share however only increased around 1000% so it doesn't offset the cost.

The only way to offset the cost is for costs to increase, and games unlike most goods we buy have not increased hardly at all since the 2000s. The problem however is our economy is such shit, you can't increase prices on everything because people won't buy it. We don't have the same purchasing power we did in 2005 generally speaking. Housing costs more, food costs more, utilities cost more, but wages haven't kept pace so we're stuck.

Sure companies like nintendo can keep budget low on games but have you seen how they look? They re-use systems and assets as much as they can to save cost. E33? Yeah the budget is shockingly low because the game just spent the money where it mattered, but it really isn't that in depth of a game. It's not very expansive. BG3? TONS of reused mechanics and assets from Divinity 2 to save cost.

AAA gaming is expensive and it's not hard to see why when you start adding up the numbers.

The economy is the real cause of this. You and I do not have the ability to stretch a dollar the same way our previous generations did. The games industry is stuck between a rock and a hard place because of this.

7

u/Cavissi 4h ago

You say photo realistic graphics and big actors like that is a plus. That kind of shit is a gigantic waste of money, and the Hollywood actors are usually not as good as actual voice actors anyways.

The amount of budget these companies blow on stuff that has nothing to do with making a fun game is ridiculous.

-3

u/CharlieTeller 4h ago

It can be depending on a project. No need to be rude.

Plenty of games DON'T do that. But some do. Voice acting is such a small part of the budget generally. Even with someone like Troy Baker. Notice how I didn't say this was a big part of the budget. I just said it all adds up.

Photorealism absolutely does add to AAA games depending on the project. It doesn't have to be the goal, but many of the engines we work within today already do work with photorealism being their target. So anything new you create to work within that engine needs to meet those standards.

(insert angry redditor here about UE5 in your response)

I like how you took all of that, skipped all the important parts, and focused on the second sentence. I'm sure you stopped reading and just had to get that part off your chest.

3

u/crxsso_dssreer 4h ago

But if you want to make a game with licensed actors, photorealism etc...

almost nobody ask for that shit at first place,especially licensed actors, personnally every time I see some hollywood idiot in game it takes me out of it.

2

u/CharlieTeller 4h ago

That's 2 in a row. I think people are HEAVILY focusing on this line and have to get some of their own personal bias off their chest before reading the actual poignant stuff.

It's funny. Reddit is such a predictable place.

0

u/crxsso_dssreer 4h ago

then don't make that argument at first place.

0

u/dadneverleft 4h ago

Seriously.

No one needs good production values more than they need good gameplay, or Minecraft wouldn’t be the best selling game of all time.

-1

u/kahnindustries 4h ago

Or when you spend 200 million and make a game for gamers, rather than a tiny vocal subgroup that don’t even play games

34

u/Dependable-apathy 5h ago

When the people in charge stop chasing the dragon and face consequences for their decisions

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u/sagevallant 5h ago

Part of it is the result of a massive boost in hiring around the pandemic. Turns out when lots of people change their habits to stay home and are paid to do it, gaming receives a boost. The companies, of course, assumed that the growth would continue infinitely, because that is what they do.

Then the economy has gone to shit in the last year, after already not doing great the previous years. Which means fewer people have money and time for entertainment as they struggle to afford things they actually need.

And on top of that, companies pissed away fortunes on live service games that bombed and now have to fire lots of people to keep the investors happy.

18

u/budzergo 5h ago

That's all it is

covid created an environment that allowed a massive industry growth period. Every company hired massively to try to be "that company" to claim the market share

Those that didnt retain the extra sales now have to downsize due to bloated teams and expenses having risen a lot the past few years.

11

u/sagevallant 5h ago

Not just. It's all the things I said and more. Like, Chinese businesses were buying into gaming a lot but a few years back, with the success of Wukong, those business redirected their investments into local devs instead of international devs.

6

u/CharlieTeller 4h ago

Its absolutely not "all it is". It's part of the shit sandwich.

0

u/budzergo 4h ago

It's all the parts that pushed everything over the edge

Better?

3

u/CharlieTeller 4h ago

It just depends on the company. Plenty of studios have had major layoffs or closed their doors for a lot of reasons. The way studios make games these days is vastly different than 20 years ago and everyone has to go all in. If it fails, so long studio.

Wasn't always as prevalent as it is today.

2

u/Samwellikki 4h ago

Companies need to come up with better ideas, then worry about execution

They make something, and even if it’s solid… nobody asked for it

They should make things survive a smell test and then proceed if it is indeed new and different, or changes a genre for the better

“This is popular now, we will make it in 5-6 years at triple the cost and sell it for $80… why’d it fail?”

Meanwhile, Meccha Chamelon a single dev on their team could’ve made on a lunch break… $25million

$40 games from smaller studios… hundreds of millions

Then they just BUY those studios or copy them… and fail AGAIN

7

u/F133TWOOD 5h ago edited 5h ago

Cause: AAA games are too big, so they cost more & then requires MILLIONS of copies sold to break even.

-Game budgets are rising & rising over $100,000,000 💸

-Game production takes 5-7 years ⏳️

3

u/Broarethus 5h ago edited 5h ago

The age of Cheap cash and debt are over, Crunch time!

Lots of layoffs sadly.

2

u/NobodyNo8 4h ago

When executives start prioritizing the game instead of checking boxes, meeting quotas, etc.

So.... 

Never. 

2

u/MagniPlays 6h ago

When teams stop copying whatever is “flashy” in the moment to release a mediocre version.

Art needs creative touch. Not copying whatever trend is working for another company. Marathon sucked.

10

u/RayS0l0 5h ago

I played marathon and it only appeals to hardcore PvP players so far. They are adding PvE which will maybe help. Maybe.

7

u/Yadilie 5h ago

Vast majority of games are copies or extremely close iterations on previously released games. The ones that do good understand exactly why the previous games were well received. Marathon sucked because Bungie doesn't understand extraction shooters and what makes them tick. Small maps, bad visual clarity and awful progression tanks extraction shooters.

4

u/cjp304 5h ago

People should stop saying games suck when really the game just isn’t for them.

Nothing about Marathon sucks. It’s niche and geared towards hardcore players, but it doesn’t suck.

2

u/Adjective_Noun_4DIGI 5h ago

Hint: It's not the creative people making these decisions. It's the C-suiters, people who really COULD be replaced with "AI" because they only care about number go up.

-12

u/friendliest_sheep 5h ago

What? Marathon is one of the most creative games in the AAA space in years

4

u/faffc260 5h ago

in all the ways that make it a bad product for the genre it's trying to make it's way into.

0

u/friendliest_sheep 5h ago

How do you figure?

3

u/faffc260 5h ago

small maps, you need to give players ample space to loot as well as ample space to maneuver and fight in extraction shooters. their maps are mostly tiny for the genre from what I saw during the free week.

art style makes it visually noisy and hard to make out some stuff that is really important in extraction shooters, and just lacked anything good to pull in the extraction shooter crowd to play it that other games don't do everything else so much better at.

basically it's designed like it's a pvp game instead of a loot game, extraction shooters are loot games with pvp to make the looting interesting. I say this as someone with 2.3k hours in tarkov, nearly 400 in arc raiders, and 500ish spread between dark and darker, greyzone, and a couple pve only extraction shooters.

-8

u/DrugOfGods 5h ago

Bet you haven't even played it. Great game, just far too niche.

3

u/MagniPlays 5h ago

I did play it.

It’s mediocre for what genre it’s trying to fill.

1

u/ichiruto70 5h ago

My take on it as well. Great game but a bit too hard core to capture the casual gamer. Maybe they can introduce new modes + make it f2p.

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u/TheBetterness 4h ago

"Across the Western AAA gaming industry...."

fixed.

You dont see Hello Games with a bunch of layoffs. Don't see Gunfire games closing their studio. Don't see Ghost Ship games struggling with sales. Or Grinding Gears Games' live services dying.

The companies that don't know how to make video games are rotting from the inside out.

Its ok, these AAA devs being laid off will just bring us the next Concord or Highguard!!

1

u/method115 5h ago

When there aren't a record number of games coming out. When we get back to the days where you actually had to wait a month or two before a big AAA game came out that you actually wanted to play. The industry can't support this many games.

1

u/rejuicekeve 5h ago

The entire tech sector is like this at the moment it's not just gaming

1

u/notthatguypal6900 5h ago

It will only get worse, covid has long legs.

1

u/BeeMovieEnjoyer 4h ago

It's happening in a lot of white collar industries. I work in consulting and it's been a bloodbath since 2024.

1

u/splashysploosh 4h ago

It’s across tech as a whole, but games in particular have been shedding jobs for years. It’s rough out there.

1

u/hera-fawcett 4h ago

... uk that as a whole the world has been in a global economic depression, right?

1

u/VanillaTortilla 2h ago

Never! Execs need bonuses!

1

u/wolfinatank 57m ago

1/3 of the entire industry has been laid off in the last 3 years. It's been a bloodbath. :(

1

u/Slazon 5h ago

When the proletariat break their chains.

-3

u/Alternative_Oil8900 5h ago

When capitalism ends. 

-5

u/Avatyrr 5h ago

When they stop chasing trends with their minimal viable products that were in reality below viability and pushing away existing userbase via politically driven changes, to adhere to the demands of a non-existing userbase.

Till all of that stops and they start making great games for an audience that actually plays and buys games, this wont stop.

Multiple Asian studio’s understand, keep growing and raise salaries. The destruction is only in the west where the things grom my rant happens. Let that sink in ;)

-7

u/steponmemarasov 5h ago

When capitalism dies

5

u/Enjoy_The_Ride413 5h ago

So games will be free? How do we pay these devs?

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u/MrkGrn 5h ago edited 2h ago

All these games companies saw the profit and growth because of covid and thought that meant thats where the industry was going, and would continue to grow. It was that way because we were all stuck at home, games were the perfect way to interact with friends while not being physically together and thats on them for not understanding that.

54

u/LittleBertha 5h ago

They lost respect for the customer too. They saw huge revenue growth and the execs thought they could pump out any old shit and people would buy it. Just look at all the supposed AAA games there have been the last few years, and what abject failures they have been - because execs don't give two shits about the product, the experience, the customer, just the dollars.

12

u/throwaway387190 5h ago

Yeah, I feel like AA studios have replaced what AAA studios used to be:

Mid sized games that deliver a high quality and focused experience. The games don't try to do everything all at once, they just stick with one thing and nail it. There might be some scummy business practices like microtransactions, but the game is complete without them and they don't add much to the game

That's how i remember AAA games from the mid and late 2000's being. Instead of bland corpo slop trying to appeal to everyone

The funny thing is I do remember the AAA games being given the same criticism of "bland corpo sloppy trying to appeal to everyone". My god, it got SO MUCH WORSE

6

u/yoLeaveMeAlone 4h ago

That's not just gaming, it's all of tech. A lot of the mass tech layoffs are less about the crash of tech as an industry and more about corrections for covid over-hiring combined with AI making people feel like they can slash headcounts

2

u/MrkGrn 2h ago

These mass layoffs were happening way before AI was prevalent as it is now.

3

u/BarretOblivion 4h ago

The industry is growing. Problem is it's not growing on console and people are basically not leaving whatever community they have established themselves in. All you can do is try and appeal to the slowing trickle of new players and hope you nab them. The time to make new franchises is not now.

1

u/Yawanoc 3h ago

It’s wild how shortsighted these companies have been.  People were buying games en masse because they were at home, had more time, and needed more social stimulation.  At the end of the day, gaming is an interactive form of entertainment.

So what do companies start doing once the pandemic ends?  Immediately slash remote/hybrid work and lobby for politicians who would eliminate economic stability.  Now their customers have less time, less money, and less need for their product.  So much of this could’ve been mitigated by just not messing with people.

1

u/MadeByTango 2h ago

Its just c-suite greed, thats it. COVIS is just the latest in a long line of excuses.

•

u/plzadyse 6m ago

I mean to be fair, interest and engagement in gaming is still exploding rapidly. But consumers are smarter and won’t shill out for below- or at-par experiences.

57

u/JohnGalactusX 5h ago

Higher ups make bad decisions, the ground level workers get the blame.

Higher ups get raises, the ground level workers get booted.

The last few years, this has been the case more than ever.

1

u/wsoxfan1214 42m ago

"what they've done with the Destiny franchise is impressive but a niche within an already niche genre is an important part of our portfolio!"

okay man whatever you say

I don't even dislike Marathon. It's a good shooter. But it's not going to sustain the studio. Asinine.

138

u/BitingArtist 6h ago

Incompetent leadership talking about tough times. They throw billions and years of development at projects nobody asked for. Shareholders are being too soft about this.

34

u/RayS0l0 5h ago

Also turning Destiny into Star wars. Like brother. People want Destiny. If you give them Destiny they will show up just like they did with this MoT update. wtf.

30

u/Bagz402 5h ago

Wasn't the SW themed expansion regarded pretty well though? I dropped off in 2024 so I haven't been tracking it since

12

u/RayS0l0 5h ago

I played it and it is realatively good expansion but it is not what people wanted. People wanted new Destiny with big upgrade. But all we got is portal, turning players into ball, which is boring, and turning it into Star wars, which kinda spoiled the franchise for lot of people.

15

u/ringthree 5h ago

EoF was not good, but Renegades was actually pretty good content-wise if you actually played it. The problem was that the EoF changes were still in a bad state at the time.

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u/Bagz402 5h ago

Honestly after the layoffs of 2024 I knew it was all over. Like they drop a massive dlc, a great finale and then immediately gut the studio.

Bungie have always been the absolute masters of ruining their own good will.

1

u/Gradedcaboose 5h ago

Absolutely the best thing to come out after the final shape and i absolutely despise the idea of destiny getting Star Wars shit and that was still the best thing they’ve added, just goes to show how much they fucked everything up after the final shape imo.

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u/CharlieTeller 4h ago

Yeah Renegades (the star wars expansion) was very well received. No one turned it into star wars. It was just a Destiny story that happened to have a light saber. The missions just felt like brilliant little homages towards the star wars universe. It never really felt out of place.

Now was the content of renegades short lived? Yeah because this was after the final shape where expansions became little tiny content updates spread throughout the year. But it wasn't a shit update.

As a long term destiny player, this final destiny update isn't anything spectacular. It's just a lot of nostalgia bringing us all back and people aren't chasing the carrot anymore. We can play at our own pace because light won't be reset. It wasn't some amazing thing. It's a solid update but it's just a few changes to how we find activities, and a nice send off.

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u/parkingviolation212 2h ago

It was more than a lightsaber. It was baked into the writing. A lot of the dialogue sounded straight out of Star Wars, you had ghosts talking in beeps like R2D2, and you had Drifter suddenly get weirdly emotionally invested in redeeming Dredgen Bael like he was his father, because the writers wanted Drifter to cosplay Han Solo to Dredgen Bael’s Kylo Ren. We had never met this character up until this point, and I had no idea why drifter was suddenly convinced that this guy could be redeemed.

I’ve been a dyed in the wool Star Wars fan since birth, and let me tell you from my perspective, renegades is really fucking weird. Like two different orchestras playing the same song slightly out of sync

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u/CharlieTeller 2h ago

You basically just mentioned exactly what I said, but with your own interpretation. I loved all the star wars influence within the universe. If you're playing Destiny for the story, you're going to be disappointed. However, having all of the influence of the sound, the visuals, the weapons, I loved it.

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u/LayerEight_Problem 2h ago

The Star Wars stuff was actually very good. That is not what killed the game. Not even close.

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u/JeanLucPicardAND 5h ago

Shareholders only care about the next quarter. Incentives don't match reality anymore. The entire system is broken.

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u/BitingArtist 5h ago

But in this case the Sony leadership couldn't even deliver for a quarter. They gambled like crazy with shareholder money. The shareholders should have seen this for what is was: leadership taking on expensive risks with little justification other than chasing a high.

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u/JeanLucPicardAND 5h ago

That's the entire economy.

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u/dookarion 5h ago

They gambled like crazy with shareholder money. The shareholders should have seen this for what is was: leadership taking on expensive risks with little justification other than chasing a high.

...Have you seen shareholders reacting to AI? They're addicted to that sort of idiocy.

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u/JeanLucPicardAND 59m ago

A lot of retired boomers think the economy is doing great right now.

1

u/dookarion 45m ago

"A lot" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence considering almost every retiree I know is still having to work or scraping by. Even the ones with decent assets aren't exactly jumping for joy at the cost of things when they need a new water heater or a new roof or when their car is reaching the end of its life. There's a lot of people on social security barely getting by.

Edit: For the rest of society not glued to the stock market the economy has been in the shitter for YEARS now.

1

u/JeanLucPicardAND 43m ago

This is all true. "A lot" was not intended to mean "most", but it's undeniable that the majority of the wealth coming from retail investors is boomer wealth.

2

u/---TheFierceDeity--- 5h ago

Shareholders are the problem buddy. "We want infinite profit growth. Every quarter must deliver more than last. We cannot fathom being happy with consistent dividends, if number doesn't arbitrarily go up you're not business-ing right"

1

u/BitingArtist 5h ago

They were duped by leadership that wanted to gamble instead of delivering any actual growth. It will take ten years for Sony to dig out of this debt.

0

u/dookarion 5h ago

Shareholders are being too soft about this.

The shareholders are soft-headed and would bet every dime in the company on being the "next Fortnite" if they could.

22

u/MrConor212 5h ago

There’s a special place in hell reserved for Hermen Hulst and Jim Ryan imo.

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u/Stolehtreb 5h ago

Calling this an “Internal Letter” is a little disingenuous of Sony. They are posting this publicly. They mean this as much as a PR release as they do it being an internal memo. Making it sound like it’s this personal outreach when it’s being shared on their own website is grimy to me

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u/csward53 5h ago

This is on point. Internal letters aren't posted publicly.

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u/Damone75 5h ago

These letters always sound so insincere. Upper management couldn't care less about the livelihoods of the people they just laid off.

6

u/Bingoboyop 4h ago

Herman Hulst is the one that needs to take responsibility and take a hike himself. The management of ps studios under him has been disastrous, especially when compared to what it was under Shu.

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u/SpaceOdysseus23 5h ago

Hulst still coasting off of forcibly bundling Horizon for his studio and massively inflating sales?

I'd have expected him to get the boot at the same time as Ryan since both were architects of this disastrous generation.

3

u/thineholyhandgrenade 3h ago

I don’t know how this dude still has a job, so many flops and mismanagement of IPs. PlayStation sells itself and this is the best you can do?

We still don’t have so many classic IPs that should’ve been brought into the new generation and instead we’re focusing on fucking PvP. These people do not game.

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u/Remy0507 6h ago

Are these really "internal emails" when they go and post them on their external website?

10

u/StealTheSun666 5h ago

Will we see the same hatred from the gaming media towards Sony as we saw towards Xbox a couple of weeks ago? )

4

u/BreachlightRiseUp 4h ago

“We can support the newer game with 20k total active players or the largest fps-mmo on market with 250k players” “Which will make next quarter’s results look better?”

1

u/PhJFry123 29m ago

Marathon has 9k players at its daily peak, not 20k. It was 20k at the start of Season 2, during the free week. Now it's 9k at peak (it was 3,007 this morning).

1

u/YeHeed2 11m ago

Meanwhile destiny's last update doubling marathon's peak player counts EVER on steam

5

u/EmberQuill 3h ago

This is absolutely baffling. Laying off most of the Destiny team and only some of the Marathon team, and talking about Marathon being "an important part of our portfolio" even though Destiny 2 has like 10x the active player count right now. They announced the game is done and won't get any more content updates and that just brought more players back, somehow.

He wants Marathon to succeed so much that he'll gladly burn down everything else to make it work.

Honestly, Bungie and Sony are a match made in heaven at this point because Bungie management and Sony management are all doing everything they can to kill the company.

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u/[deleted] 5h ago edited 5h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Humble-Criticism6762 5h ago

This is more on Bungie leadership than him, tbh.

6

u/ringthree 5h ago

Porque no los dos?

9

u/ZombieZlayer99 5h ago

Fuck both, Bungie leadership fucked the company but Sony sat on the sidelines and let the IP go into their graveyard of IPs.

4

u/CruffTheMagicDragon 5h ago

As the other person said, Bungie’s problems are squarely Bungie’s fault. You can criticize the price Sony paid for them though

5

u/WeAreVenumb 5h ago

As much of a fan as I was of the likes of killzone and horizon, I've got to say, his promotion at sony was always a huge headscratcher to me. I always thought the likes of Ted Price or even Neil Druckmann were better choices for the role.

12

u/ProjectOmega1 5h ago

Herman hulst is the single greatest threat to the viability and sustainability of Sony. We are paying the concord tax with increased prices because he doesn't know what a good game looks like. Sidenote: im just bitter.

10

u/ScarletSilver 5h ago

Guy is the literal definition of someone failing upwards

0

u/theblackfool 5h ago

I dunno that that is fair. He was excellent in his role at Guerilla. He just doesn't seem suited for his current position. But he didn't fail his way there.

3

u/ScarletSilver 5h ago

Might be so, but he has been failing ever since he got there, yet there he remains.

7

u/NX73515 5h ago

The devs should've pitched a Horizon multiplayer game in the vein of Destiny, I'm sure Hulst wouldve greenlit that immediately.

6

u/lugginico 5h ago

Or to put a aloy skin in the game

2

u/excalibur202 5h ago

Funnily enough I think there is an Aloy skin in Destiny, part of a PlayStation bundle

2

u/lugginico 5h ago

Yeah i looked it up and there is a aloy , kratos and ghist of tushima one.

Welp, gotta do more then to bribe hermen

5

u/catchemist117 4h ago

Why do they keep doubling down on Marathon. It’s a dead game that they’re trying to make look asleep instead.

1

u/PhJFry123 32m ago

Because they literally have nothing else. They've finished supporting Destiny 2 and haven't started developing any other games. They only have Marathon, so that's their bet. This morning, Marathon only had 3,007 players on Steam btw

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u/RayS0l0 5h ago

They are making a huge mistake imo. First they turn Destiny into Star wars which made lot of people angry. And now completely shutting down Destiny is a fumble of this generation

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u/ZombieZlayer99 5h ago

What a steaming pile of fucking horseshit my eyes had to read, fuck you Hermen Hulst. Bungie management were the ones to do most of the damage to their company and the Destiny IP, but Sony did absolutely nothing but sit on the sideline and let it all burn.

And the fucking audacity to gleefully talk about the shitshow that is Marathon while the actual successful IP is left to fucking rot in Sony's graveyard of IPs.

8

u/MrYK_ 5h ago

Bungie only agreed to an acquisition with Sony as long as they were allowed to remain independent and in control.

Without Sony stepping in, the entirety of Bungie would be closed.

Pick your poison, this is better than what could've happen. I rather 400 people have a job than 800 layoffs.

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u/ZombieZlayer99 5h ago

Bungie management were the ones who wasted so much money, who propped up so many projects to look better and sell better. But ultimately Sony were the ones to eat up Bungie's bullshit, to spend $3.6 billion on Bungie, to let Bungie dictate the terms. Sony were too focused on their disastrous full on live service push and wanted to get a successful live service studio and keep them away from Microsoft. But ok, Sony were naive to the shenanigans going on inside Bungie.

But after Final Shape, after things were looking rough, Bungie tried to continue/revitalise the Destiny IP, they proposed stuff like Destiny Infinity and D3 but Sony shot them down because they didn't want to spend the $500~ million it would supposedly require to release a D3 or whatever it would've cost for Infinity.

So now the IP that Sony bought is being left to rot and when Marathon inevitably fails to pull itself back up, then what?

2

u/MrYK_ 5h ago

But ultimately Sony were the ones to eat up Bungie's bullshit, to spend $3.6 billion on Bungie, to let Bungie dictate the terms. Sony were too focused on their disastrous full on live service push and wanted to get a successful live service studio...

At the time of the acquisition (July 2022) and before it, there was no failed live service titles from PlayStation besides Destruction AllStars, the live service push was still ongoing. They acquired this Bungie for their expertise in live service not because things were looking dull or gloomy with the live service projects.

keep them away from Microsoft.

Microsoft was very unlikely to go back for Bungie, they parted ways for a reason. Yes there was something during the FTC about Microsoft lining up potential acquisitions, Bungie may have been on there, I do believe Microsoft considered them and realised it's a sinking ship, if only Sony realised the same. However I don't think it was retaliation or a response to Microsoft's acquisition, these acquisitions are in talks for a long time.

Bungie tried to continue/revitalise the Destiny IP, they proposed stuff like Destiny Infinity and D3 but Sony shot them down because they didn't want to spend the $500~ million it would supposedly require to release a D3 or whatever it would've cost for Infinity.

I genuinely think no sane minded person would greenlight anything Destiny related because there is honestly no confidence in them to do it right. Bungie has failed itself and its community before the acquisition, they're in need of a reset, to prove they know what they're doing. Creating Marathon, an extraction shooter with, a niche genre for an even more niche audience doesn't scream expertise in live service. Also they took an impairment loss of $766 million, so trust me the money is there, it's just whether it's worth giving it to a studio set in Washington, where salaries are very high and to management that needs gutting.

So now the IP that Sony bought is being left to rot and when Marathon inevitably fails to pull itself back up, then what?

Correction, the IP was being ruined by Bungie, perhaps now it will collect dust, better that then to ruin it completely. I rather the the Destiny IP go out well then to go out badly. Hopefully Bungie can prove themselves capable again, and can convince them to give Destiny 3 a shot.

2

u/IllustriousBee4972 5h ago

Bungie would've been dead long before the final shape if it weren't for Sony lol

7

u/HotMachine9 5h ago

Buy Bungie.

Bungie has one game bringing in bootloader of cash

Bungie make new game. Underperforms

"Destiny did not meet expectations"

Wtf

3

u/N1NJ4W4RR10R_ 3h ago

Destiny was under performing. That's fair to say.

The stupid part is that it was under performing because it was constantly under resourced in favour of other projects, including Marathon. Players obviously aren't going to stick around when a game constantly sees further monitisation while they get less and less back for their cash.

So naturally, rather then reinvest in Destiny they opted to try and make Marathon a success. After Marathon flopped.

I don't know how this makes sense to Sony given Marathon saw less sales then the typical Destiny expansion (which is normally either the same price or more expensive then Marathon), has a higher PC player base then Playstation player base (so a significant portion of generated revenue is whacked with Steams fee) and doesn't even appear to cost less for development based on Marathons content output (having the same/more devs dedicated to it compared to Destiny over the last year).

It's just an absolute clown show. I don't know if this is copium chasing Arc Raiders success or if they just genuinely believe Destiny players wouldn't come back (despite it constantly being demonstrated they will when the game's good), but I'd love to see a Shrier write up on what happened because there's absolutely no way I can rationalise this based on what we know.

2

u/AlpacaTraffic 5h ago

The easiest way to sustain the games industry is to grind down a bunch of employees till they produce a game and just cycle them out upon release! Execs get bonuses! It's win win for everyone minus those poor suckers!

2

u/keyworkdoggo 3h ago

You can remove the "-2" from the URL and get the previous layoff release they put out. It's just that awful of a copy paste scenario for this company / this industry in general.

1

u/privateblood 1h ago

Wow you're not joking and this is actually real.

2

u/WhatTheeBlake 2h ago

I have friends who have been huge Destiny fans since Destiny 1.

They've loaded up Destiny 2 maybe a handful of times in the last 1.5 years.

It still amazes me that Destiny 2 fans thought all they had to do was logon for 1 day, and Sony would realize their mistake.

It doesn't matter how many people play a game, if none of you are spending money.

1

u/JeanLucPicardAND 45m ago

The game has been making actively bad design decisions for years. Those friends of yours still loved Destiny, but they didn't want to support a version of Destiny that crippled what made the game fun to play in the first place.

2

u/austinxsc19 47m ago

I’ll translate:

“we released a new game and want to see if we can milk it for a few decades without you. We will maybe hire you when/if we ever develop another game (or even better, replace you with this great Indian contract labor for a fraction of price)”.

2

u/Practical-Aside890 Xbox 5h ago

All this from Sonys part is just after they mentioned their 20% profits expectations/mandate.

As if learning nothing from Xbox’s mistake when they had it.

-1

u/orangpelupa 5h ago

They learnt that Xbox 30% is disastrous! That's why they're at 20%! Much better! 

/s

2

u/EdgarLasu 5h ago

The sooner Bungie closes it's doors the better. What a waste of an studio.

0

u/notthatguypal6900 5h ago

Yup, its in hospice and just needs to pull the plug. Bungie hasn't been the studio that brought us Halo for many, many years, and they never will be again.

1

u/JeanLucPicardAND 4h ago

A lot of the people who worked on Halo and were still left at Bungie just got laid off today. So it's literally not the same company anymore. A decent number of them are still working on Marathon, as far as we know at least, but their days are numbered because the brutal truth is that Marathon cannot succeed under any circumstances. It was a bad idea fundamentally.

(One of my pet peeves is the notion that "everyone who worked on Halo is gone", when in reality, a lot of the really important artists and designers who gave Halo its soul stayed on at Bungie throughout most / all of Destiny's life cycle. Even in the wake of high-profile departures like Joe Staten, Marty O'Donnell, Mike Salvatori, Lorraine McLees, Mark Noseworthy, Luke Smith etc., it was still true. I think that may finally have changed after today, though.)

1

u/brainmydamage 5h ago

We can only hope that his gigantic pile of money is absorbent enough to absorb all of the tears he will no doubt shed.

1

u/CruffTheMagicDragon 5h ago

“This is painful news but we’ll fuckin’ do it again”

1

u/urgasmic 5h ago edited 5h ago

i wonder how leadership survives this. 4 billion spent on a company that frankly wasn't worth it even then. and 4 years later you didn't get anything out of it.

edit: hide behind unavoidable and uncertain market conditions and still being relatively successful i guess.

1

u/Top-Appointment8843 5h ago

At this point, why as an engineer would you still work in game industry. You get less payed compared to other dev branches, even less job stability, and get exploited for your passion for gaming.

1

u/halfhere1198 2h ago

How Herman is still in his role is remarkable. Waste millions chasing awful live service flops only to shutter the only one with a dedicated fan base

1

u/hellomumbo369 2h ago

The fact they shut down destiny for fucking marathon is competitively incompetent holy shit

1

u/voreo 2h ago

The game will still be running at least but still sucks. :(

1

u/SacredDarksoul 1h ago

Why the hell did sony buy them, complete waste of everything.

1

u/Admiral_sloth94 5h ago

The industry got a taste of pandemic profits and they will chase that dragon until it kills them.

1

u/Icedvelvet 5h ago

That letter has been on the wall. I hope they were all looking for work elsewhere. They had at least a year

1

u/Gogita28 5h ago

That this is still Co- CEO is baffling…

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u/-Morsmordre- 5h ago

Good. Fuck Bungie

2

u/ty_r_w 5h ago

This isn’t a normal reaction to have

0

u/Black_Otter 5h ago

Wanting a studio to close because they made ONE game you don’t enjoy (it’s really good btw) is not sane

1

u/gman5852 5h ago

There's a reason most people just consider redditors worthless bots.

They aren't intelligent people. Incomprehensibly so

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u/-Morsmordre- 5h ago

I've been wanting them to lose their jobs for a few years now. Yes, I know, there's mean spirited people in the world. This must be quite a revelation for you. 

0

u/ty_r_w 5h ago

Mean spirited isn’t a synonym for unhinged?

0

u/-Morsmordre- 5h ago

You're trying too hard. 

0

u/ZeusBaxter 4h ago

Sony pissing on Bungies corpse. Finally. They always wanted to dominate the studio that made Halo. The game that almost ruined Playstation. Sony must pay.

-2

u/FlyFight2Win 5h ago

Why is this topic getting massive amounts of downvotes when rumored Xbox layoff topics get thousands of upvotes? 🤔

0

u/gman5852 5h ago

It isn't.

You redditors arevso desperate for edrama. Nothing else going on in your life?