Bungie, like far too many studios this yr has only recently gone by a wave of layoffs, and based on stories let about 8% of its employees go, which was roughly 100 individuals.
Now on Thursday, three days since stories of the layoffs first struck, the studio lastly launched an announcement, calling this week “one of the tough weeks in our studio’s historical past, as we’ve parted methods with individuals we respect and admire.”
Within the assertion titled “Our Path Ahead,” the studio emphasizes that it has heard followers’ issues concerning its final large growth and up to date seasons, and that the studio understands “we have to make The Ultimate Form (its upcoming Future 2 growth) an unforgettable Future expertise.”
Bungie additionally admits that it is aware of “we now have misplaced a whole lot of your belief. Future must shock and delight. We haven’t accomplished this sufficient and that’s going to vary.”
“We need to construct one thing that might be regarded alongside the perfect video games we’ve ever made – a becoming end result that honors the journey we’ve been on collectively for the previous ten years. Forsaken, The Witch Queen, and The Taken King – these are the usual bearers we intention to reside as much as.
We’re intensely centered on exceeding your expectations for The Ultimate Form. Future 2 has greater than 650 devoted teammates pouring all their vitality and experience into delivering this epic second and its subsequent Episodes.”
Bungie then goes on to say that extra information will arrive “within the weeks forward,” concerning what’s subsequent brief time period, like its coming season, and following that we’ll start to see extra about The Ultimate Form.
Throughout the entire assertion, the phrase “layoffs” isn’t precisely used. Bungie solely admits that there are individuals who have been with the corporate, who now “now not are,” implying that the choice for all these staff to go away directly was an amicable one.
Moderately shortly, the assertion turns from being about those that’ve misplaced their livelihoods, and to only how jazzed all of the 650 individuals who nonetheless have a job are to make The Ultimate Form.
Title-dropping the expansions which nonetheless resonate with long-time Future followers minds even looks like an try and play on the nostalgia of these occasions, and pre-emptively place The Ultimate Form amongst those self same giants which arguably made Future the phenomenon it’s at this time.
If 2023 has been nothing else, it’s been a bitter reminder that layoffs are a harsh, terrible actuality of the selections that large companies make, and that they brutally impact 1000’s of individuals a yr, whereas little or no appears to vary for these within the c-suite bracket.
Not that it’s something past a efficiency, however there are nonetheless publishers who will at the very least name out what they’re doing after they do it, to say the phrase layoffs, and be extra clear in regards to the sort of assist it should present those that’ve been laid off.
Bungie has accomplished neither, and we’re meant to take the studio at its phrase that these individuals are being taken care of, although the layoff was completely timed to make staff lose out on unvested shares that they had inside Bungie because it was bought by Sony, with all these shares now reverting again to Bungie.
And regardless of that barring well being advantages, Bungie solely coated the advantages of these laid off for one additional day past their time period with the studio.
Obscure, missing statements like this make the layoffs nearly really feel worse, and put Bungie’s title subsequent to others within the business who’re extra persistently seen in a shady highlight.
If Bungie is conscious that it has misplaced participant belief, then this assertion has supplied no plan of action by which it goals to get that belief again past making The Ultimate Form “unforgettable.”
A promise that each writer makes, that its subsequent mission might be ‘unforgettable,’ similar to it stated in regards to the final one, which turned out to in reality be forgettable.
Even when The Ultimate Form is superb, it received’t resolve the basis drawback {that a} lack of transparency from Bungie has created with the studio’s relationship with the gamers.
Hopefully there’s extra transparency from the studio sooner or later, and for its personal sake, that it is ready to ship on the whole lot it’s attempting to make The Ultimate Form out to be.
Supply – [Bungie, Bloomberg]