Sony Cuts Half of Bungie: 400 Gone, Destiny Wound Down, and a 3.6 Billion Dollar Bet on Marathon
2026-06-25
“You pay 3.6 billion dollars for a studio, then cut half of it in three rounds, and call it portfolio management.”
On 25 June 2026, Sony announced it was cutting about 400 jobs at Bungie, roughly half the studio, in a tidy PlayStation Studios blog post. Most of the Destiny team is gone, some of Marathon too, plus supporting SIE staff. The phrasing is corporate-calm. The math is not: half a studio in one swing, four years after Sony paid 3.6 billion dollars to own it.
Here is the part the blog post would rather you skim past. This is the third round, not the first. Roughly 100 went in October 2023, around 220 in July 2024, and now 400. That is not a one-off correction; that is a pattern. Bungie says Destiny 2 fell short of expectations over the past several years, so after the final live-service update it can no longer operate at its previous size. Translation: the live-service gold rush ended, and the hangover is being paid for by the people who showed up to work.
Meanwhile leadership churns at the top. Studio head Justin Truman is reported to be stepping down after less than a year, and Bungie's former VP of Operations Poria Torkan is reported to be running the place now. So the verdict on this moment is simple. Sony is winding down a decade-old franchise that actually existed to double down on Marathon, which does not yet have to prove anything to anyone. Bold strategy. The bill just landed on 400 desks.
- On 25 June 2026, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced major layoffs at Bungie, confirmed by Hermen Hulst, CEO of the Studio Business Group at SIE, in an official PlayStation Studios blog update.
- About 400 jobs were cut, roughly half of Bungie's total headcount, hitting most of the Destiny team, some of the Marathon team, and supporting SIE teams.
- This is the third major round of cuts since Sony acquired Bungie for 3.6 billion dollars in 2022, after roughly 100 jobs in October 2023 and around 220 in July 2024.
- The stated reason: Destiny 2 fell short of expectations over the past several years, and after its final live-service content update on 9 June 2026, Bungie said it could no longer operate at its previous size; Destiny 2's run spanned about nine years.
- Per Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, studio head Justin Truman is reported to be stepping down after less than a year, with former VP of Operations Poria Torkan reported to be running the studio; Sony called Marathon an important part of its portfolio and pledged transition and redeployment support.
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Here is the genuine bright side, and there is a real one. Destiny's legacy does not get layoffs. Nine years, a devoted community, and a sandbox that other shooters still quietly copy: that is a body of work that does not evaporate because a spreadsheet got recalculated. The people behind it are some of the most skilled live-service developers on the planet, and that talent does not become worthless overnight; it lands at other studios and makes their next games better. Sony pledged transition assistance and redeployment opportunities across PlayStation's studio network, which actually matters when 400 people are looking at the same job market at once. If the support is real and not just a sentence in a blog post, this is the part that decides whether anyone remembers Sony with respect.
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Let me be precise about the direction of the heat. The people losing their jobs did not burn anyone. They built and ran a game that held a community for nine years, which is longer than most studios survive at all. The burn lands on the strategy. Sony paid 3.6 billion dollars for Bungie betting that live-service was an endless cash faucet, then watched the faucet slow, and is now on its third round of cutting headcount to balance a bet that the executives made, not the developers. Add leadership stepping down after less than a year, and you have a top that reshuffles while the bottom carries the loss. The live-service gold rush sold a fantasy of infinite engagement, and the hangover always arrives. It just never arrives at the C-suite first.
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