Destiny 2 Devs Left Looking for Projects as Officially Layoffs

Bloomberg reported that Bungie is planning a significant number of layoffs after the end of development on Destiny 2. The studio does not have a new project planned for the Destiny 2 team by June 9, and Destiny 3 is not in production.

The amount of the cuts is not yet known. What is known is that the staff is pitching ideas — including projects within the Destiny universe — but nothing has been set in stone, and there’s no guarantee that anything will come to fruition. Without Marathon, the pipeline is empty.

A Marathon You Must Carry

Bungie has entered the Marathon. That is not a strategic option as it seems to be the only one left.

The Marathon launched in March and has yet to meet sales expectations. It’s currently sitting on daily player numbers comparable to Destiny 2 – a game whose numbers were so bad that Starfield, which is available for free on Game Pass, was doing very well. About 400 people are reported to still be working at Marathon. The studio has been moving Destiny 2 developers around for the past few months, which tells you a lot about how confident they feel about what they have.

An extraction shooter type would work. ARC attackers proved that recently enough. But Marathon needs to find its legs in a market that is not waiting. They’re also backed by the parent company, which has already written down $204 million for the studio and publicly called it an operating profit. That’s not a comfortable place to ask for more runway.

Destiny generated over $500 million in revenue when it launched in 2014. It built a universe big enough to support twelve years of stories, raids, season arcs, and some of the most dedicated communities in sports. And almost nothing is accessible in any parallel way.

The comparison that always comes to mind is Mass Effect – but consider that Mass Effect only ever existed as ME3’s multiplayer mode. All those voices, all that world building, all those characters, and no single player experience to back it up. This is where Destiny ended.

Bungie sold Halo in part because they clearly didn’t want to make single-player games anymore, and that decision shaped everything that followed, for better and for worse.

The following is not clear

Bungie

It would be easy to point to Sony here, and most people would. The plot writes itself: A Japanese conglomerate acquires a popular studio for $3.6 billion, runs it down, and lays off employees. A structured narrative. Again, it’s not accurate at all.

Bungie operated with a significant degree of autonomy after the acquisition, and that was part of the deal. The decisions that led here, the live service model that made Destiny 2 increasingly hate new players, canceled projects, repeated rounds of layoffs, the choice to finish Destiny 2 without a good fan – those come from Bungie’s leadership. Sony owns the bag now, but most of the contents were packed by someone else.

Layoffs at the end of the IP life cycle are, sadly, not uncommon in this industry. That doesn’t make it any less painful for the people involved. June 9 is three weeks away. Layoffs will follow. The people who built a world where millions lived for twelve years will be looking for work, and the studio will be betting everything on a game that hasn’t found its audience yet.

If Marathon fails to hold itself accountable, Sony’s options quickly become limited. Closing the studio seems unlikely given the brand value still attached to the Destiny name. A long absence from the spotlight – quiet development, reduced population, waiting for the right time to come back with something new – seems reasonable, although whether the new thing ever gets funding is a different question.

Released

March 5, 2026

The ESRB

Youth / Animated Blood, Language, Violence, In-Game Purchases, User Interaction