- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
It’s a sad case of another day, another round of mass layoffs at a game studio. On this occasion, Destiny developer Bungie has announced it is letting go of 220 employees, or 17% of its workforce. CEO Pete Parsons said the eliminations were due to “financial challenges,” which isn’t going down well, especially after it was discovered he may have spent over $2.4 million on classic cars after Sony acquired the company, and continued buying them even after the previous layoffs.
Bungie blames the job eliminations on “rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions.” The Sony subsidiary says it needs to make substantial changes to its cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon.
The cuts will impact every level of the company, including executives and senior leader roles – but not Parsons, obviously.
It was only in October 2023 that Bungie made its last round of layoffs, and the news comes just under two months since the launch of Destiny 2: The Final Shape, which has been well-received.
In December, Bungie devs told IGN that the atmosphere at the company was “soul-crushing” due to fears of more layoffs, extra cost-cutting measures, and a loss of all independence from Sony if Bungie’s financials did not improve. Staff said earlier this year that they feared more job cuts were coming.
The latest layoffs have led to many angry posts on social media from current and former Bungie employees. Destiny 2’s global community lead Dylan Gafner (AKA dmg04) called the move “inexcusable,” and noted that it’s a case of “Accountability falling upon the workers who have pushed the needle to deliver for our community time and time again.”
What’s angering people even further is the discovery of what seems to be Parsons’ account on a car bidding site called Bring a Trailer. It shows he has spent $2.4 million on classic cars since September 2022, which includes $500,000 since the October layoffs.
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destiny moment fr
You finally found out you’re just a digit.
Nobody deserves to be able to buy $2.4mil of toys. Period. This guy is gross.
Meh imperfect world. Let’s just say it would be nice if the talent got useful recognition too, which shifts the scales.
I’m sure you didn’t mean anything more by it, but “meh, imperfect world” is the same logic employed by Christian apologists and and fundies too lazy to assess suffering rationally and honestly.
We should reject that kind of thinking, because it only leads to apathy and/or willful ignorance.
I believe it’s peer pressure once you have that kind of money. They are so far from reality they just don’t think about it. All their cocaine-buddies ramble about how they “deserve it” to throw money out of the window, they worked so hard yadda-yadda.
It’s bonkers. But I also never had that kind of money. Maybe we would all do the same thing?
Keeping the wealthy is unethical. They’re not getting the right food for their dietary needs and their enrichment activities are unhealthy. We also can’t release them back into the wild because they haven’t learned the survival skills they need. We really need a rich people zoo where people can go visit them and learn about how capitalism has prevented them from being able to live the healthy normal lives their physiology was built for
So we send them to the fucking gallows if they can’t live with the rest of us. ALL OF THEM!
Maybe we would all do the same thing?
That’s precisely my point. That kind of wealth should not be allowed, specifically because it seems to lead to this kind of behavior. Rare is the wealthy philanthropist; common is the wealthy psychopath.
The question is: can a wealthy philantropist do more good than a wealthy psychopath can do harm? Buying cars is not really bad per se, it just shows they don’t care for anything but themselves. Spending money on research to solve global warming on the other hand…
I would argue that a collectively wealthy society with middle-class wealth can do far more good than a single philanthropist with god-levels of money. Buying cars isn’t bad, but you’re glossing over the fact that they’re classic cars, i.e. very expensive hobbyist toys; these are not daily drivers, and they point to the gross inequality of the CEO being able to have millions of dollars of play money while he treats real humans like numbers in an expense formula.
Plutocracy is not the answer just because you have one good plutocrat for every nine monsters, because you still have nine monsters countering the efforts of the one.
this company is about to implode, no doubt. there’s no way they recover from this when they launch whatever comes next (I hope I am wrong, but this is just so messy)
He knows it too…
Maybe he’ll crash while driving one, and the limited safety features will ensure we’ll be rid of the asshole
It would also be another thing is this was a “hero” CEO.
But… what has Bungie done that’s interesting besides Destiny? Was his plan was to just keep doing that?
Destiny was supposed to be their “forever” game, the problem is that after 2 dozen expansions:
- New players are extremely intimidated about joining
- Old players dislike losing the content they’ve paid for when it’s vaulted
- Long term players will eventually get bored of playing the same thing they’ve been playing for years
Live service games just won’t last forever like they want them to.
I’m fine with content being vaulted to make room for new content. What I have an issue with is when the new content isn’t even half of the quality of what they removed. I quit playing shortly after menagerie was removed for exactly that reason.
I exited with a “lol no” when I saw the state of lightfall. So glad I did.
It’s still a shame for the devs. Quite talented people, it’s once again a case of major management fuck up and devs paying the bill…
Quite talented people, it’s once again a case of major management fuck up and devs paying the bill…
Workers pay the price for mistakes made by the C-Suite.
Precisely.
Developing one MMO forever is not a great strategy, and I’d argue they aren’t executing it like the Warframe devs (which is its direct competitor I guess).
Mythic Quest CEO Level Achieved.
Next up, stories of inappropriate conduct leak and somebody tiger’s a camero.
The 2.4 million are company money. Money that he had no right to spend on himself be it cars or otherwise.
Please elaborate on your comment, because it makes no sense to me.
He bought himself luxury sports cars using company money under the guise of “company car”.
Hiding your assets behind a corporate veil is a relatively common form of fraud and tax evasion for rich people.
removed, stop buying your metal scrap and pay your devs. I wanna play Marathon this century
Man as a long term destiny player, this has just been heartbreaking. The latest expansion was absolutely amazing and you could tell the devs really put their heart and soul into it. And now a lot of them are gone. The narrative leads, longtime leaders of the franchise, all canned.
Rumors about what’s upcoming suggest a major downsizing in the content that’s going to come out for players too. So I’m not even sure how they plan on continuing to make money.
Fuck Parsons.
It just seems like it’s dug it’s own grave so effectively that there’s no way to climb out.
In theory I love their aim of player retention, but they focused on it so exclusively that it became a challenge to start playing, or to come back. The new player experience isn’t just bad or non-existent, it’s basically actively hostile. Most of the story content isn’t accessible anymore, so you’re depending on dozens of hours of Youtube videos to catch up on a decade of in-jokes that you can’t experience. It’s like Eve, but worse because it was written, not just player interaction lore. Even as someone who played D1 and the first few years of D2, looking at current screenshots and trailers is alienating. They’ve revamped and juggled currencies and what power levels are so much that basically nothing is the same.
The pivot to seasons/microtransactions while ignoring recruitment of new players was a wild choice.
I know it’s a long shot, but I sincerely hope that if (when) Sony takes over management at Bungie, they at least try to hire back some of their talent that worked on TFS.
Same :(
Guys, all of you are being really mean. Do you know how many cars he would have to give up buying if he didn’t lay all those employees off?
At least one. Probably.
