{"id":10707,"date":"2025-11-11T20:17:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T12:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=10707"},"modified":"2025-11-11T20:17:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T12:17:23","slug":"sony-says-bungie-hasnt-brought-in-as-much-money-as-it-thought-it-would-when-it-bought-the-developer-as-destiny-2-falls-off-a-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=10707","title":{"rendered":"Sony Says Bungie Hasn\u2019t Brought in as Much Money as It Thought It Would When It Bought the Developer, as Destiny 2 Falls Off a Cliff"},"content":{"rendered":"


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It\u2019s a tough time for Bungie and Destiny 2, with parent company Sony saying the studio has failed to meet its sales and user engagement expectations.<\/p>\n

In its latest financial report, Sony said it had recorded a 31.5 billion yen (approx. $204.2 million) impairment charge as a result of Destiny 2\u2019s underperformance. That was significant enough to drag down profits at Sony\u2019s Game & Network Services Segment, which includes Sony Interactive Entertainment.<\/p>\n

Sony chief financial officer (CFO) Lin Tao, expanded on the issues with Bungie in an investor related financial call:<\/p>\n

\u201cRegarding Destiny 2, partially due to the changes in the competitive environment, the level of sales and user engagement have not reached the expectations we had at the time of the acquisition of Bungie. While we will continue to make improvements, we downwardly revised the business projection for the time being, and recorded an impairment loss against a portion of the assets at Bungie.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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It\u2019s certainly been a tough time for Destiny 2 and Bungie, which is working on the delayed extraction shooter Marathon for a release in 2026.<\/p>\n

In August, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons left the company after 23 years and nearly 10 as CEO. He was succeeded by Justin Truman, previously chief development officer and fellow Bungie veteran. Parsons oversaw Bungie during many turbulent years, first taking over as CEO in 2016 from Harold Ryan and overseeing its break from Activision in 2019. He was at the helm throughout many of the events catalogued in our 2021 expose of Bungie’s internal work culture<\/u>. Just months after our report, Bungie was acquired by Sony for $3.7 billion<\/u>, ending the studio’s flirtation with independence.<\/p>\n

Sony, clearly, saw something in Bungie and its upcoming slate. But as the acquisition settled in, concerns began to arise about the studio’s future. Destiny 2 was struggling, and Marathon was still years away. Then the layoffs came. In 2023, Bungie laid off roughly 100 individuals<\/u> and delayed Destiny 2’s The Final Shape DLC, with Parsons taking responsibility for the cuts. Developers told IGN at the time that the atmosphere at Bungie was “soul-crushing”<\/u> as fears grew of a total Sony takeover of the company. In 2024, this was followed up with even more layoffs<\/u>, impacting 220 people despite The Final Shape’s success. 155 people were also integrated from Bungie into Sony at this time. In the wake of those layoffs, former workers claimed Bungie misrepresented its finances and had significantly overextended itself when Sony acquired the studio. It was apparently bad enough that at least one source described as a “well-connected former worker” went so far as to claim that Bungie faced dire consequences if the acquisition hadn’t happened, saying that the “alternate history is insolvency.”<\/p>\n

Troubles continued to rock the studio through the rest of 2024 and into 2025, with Marathon seeing a delay out of September of this year<\/u> to an unknown future date. Most recently, Sony confirmed Bungie would be integrated into PlayStation Studios so the company could have more control over the developer.<\/p>\n