Everyone, including some Bungie employees, are confused about some recent listings that indicate the Destiny 2 developer has expended to 1,400 employees, just a short while after laying off a significant number of workers.
While the number may be technically correct, there appear to be a lot of caveats here based on what I’ve heard about the situation. Such as:
- There were around 1,100 employees when Bungie began layoffs.
- They laid off around 8% of the company, which was just over 100 people, so that took them down to around 1,000.
- There were far less roles listed after this, with many taken down off the job boards. It’s possible Bungie has hired back up in some places, but not to this level, at this pace.
- What appears to be happening is that this 1,400 total appears to be including some contractors and possible also some people from Sony studios who are now pitching in to help at Bungie. There was some talk of contractors filling some of the layoff positions, but we have not gotten any official announcement that other Sony studios may be pitching in to help with things. For instance, a recent design leak for a Final Shape exotic appeared to be from an outside Sony division.
This is of course reminiscent of when Bungie had support studios from Activision helping out with Destiny 2 content back in the Forsaken/Black Armor/Drifter/Opulence era of the game, which many players have fond memories of because of the breadth of what was produced. Now, with talk that Bungie really, really wants The Final Shape to be the best expansion they’ve ever done, they might have had Sony pull in support for them to help make this happen.
Still, 1,400 employees working on Destiny 2 and potentially other Bungie projects is quite large. While it would be nice if this sort of bonus support would produce another massive expansion like Forsaken, I do wonder how much of this is contractors replacing jobs that Bungie employees were just fired from.
We do not know all the details, but no, it does not appear that a few months after laying off 100 people, Bungie has suddenly hired 400 more, and this appears to be a combination of a few things happening here.
As for the end result, we’ll see what this apparent surge in the workforce, in whatever form it has taken, does for The Final Shape. Another internal thing I’ve heard is that…The Final Shape is very good, but what specifically that means remains to be seen. I hope we can get something Forsaken-level, and this may be how that happens. We’ll see.
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