Bungie, the Sony-owned studio behind Halo and Destiny, has laid off at least 292 employees in Washington after ending development on Destiny 2, cutting most of the Destiny team as part of a reorganization. The cuts, disclosed in a WARN filing with a July 9 cutoff, push Bungie's total losses past 600 jobs across three rounds since Sony acquired the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022, and they leave Marathon as the studio's only game in active development.
- At least 292 laid off in Washington. The official WARN filing covers Bungie's Bellevue headquarters and excludes other locations and contractors, so the true total is higher.
- Destiny 2 development has ended. Sony's Hermen Hulst said the cuts hit "most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members."
- Leadership is changing. Co-founder Jason Jones was affected, and studio head Justin Truman is stepping down, replaced by former VP of Operations Poria Torken.
- Only Marathon remains active. Everything else is in "early incubation," with nothing greenlit, narrowing Bungie to a single shipping bet.
What happened at Bungie?
Bungie underwent a reorganization tied to the end of Destiny 2's development. In an email to Sony Interactive Entertainment staff, Hermen Hulst, CEO of Sony's Studio Business Group, said the company was cutting a significant number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members. The official WARN notice filed in Washington puts the confirmed figure at at least 292 laid off, with a July 9 cutoff, and that number excludes other locations and contractors, so the real toll is larger. Reporting described the studio as effectively cut nearly in half by the broader Sony-led reductions.
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Why did Sony make these cuts?
The trigger was the winding down of Destiny 2, the live-service game that has anchored Bungie for years. When a studio's flagship enters maintenance rather than active expansion, the large teams built to feed it become hard to justify. Sony, which paid $3.6 billion for Bungie in 2022 partly for its live-service expertise, is reallocating around a narrower slate. The result is Bungie's third round of layoffs under Sony: roughly 100 jobs went in October 2023, another 220 in July 2024 (with 155 additional roles transferred to Sony Interactive Entertainment), and now at least 292 in 2026, more than 600 in total from a studio that had over 1,400 employees before the cuts began.
What does it mean for Bungie's games?
It narrows the studio to a single active bet: Marathon, the extraction shooter Sony says remains an important part of its portfolio. Everything else sits in early incubation, meaning nothing new has been greenlit. That is a precarious position for a studio of Bungie's history, effectively riding on one live-service title in a genre crowded with competitors. Leadership is shifting too: co-founder Jason Jones was affected by the layoffs, and studio head Justin Truman is stepping down, to be replaced by former VP of Operations Poria Torken. A leadership change during a contraction adds uncertainty to an already fragile moment.
How does this fit the industry?
It is part of a brutal multi-year contraction. Tens of thousands of games-industry jobs have been lost since 2022, and surveys have found that roughly one in three US game workers were laid off within a two-year span. The Bungie cuts echo the same forces reshaping Xbox and other large publishers: bloated teams built during a boom, live-service bets that did not all pay off, and parent companies demanding higher margins. For workers, it is another reminder that even storied studios inside deep-pocketed owners are not safe from the correction.
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What happens to the people affected?
That is the part the strategy memos gloss over. More than 292 people in Washington alone lost their jobs, many of them experienced developers who spent years building Destiny, and the broader cut touched most of that team. In a contracting industry where roughly one in three US game workers has been laid off within two years, finding a comparable role is harder than it was during the boom, and the concentration of layoffs across Xbox, Bungie, and other large studios means the whole labor market is absorbing shocks at once. Some will land at other Sony studios or at the wave of new independent teams that former Bungie talent has historically seeded. But the human cost of turning a 1,400-person studio into a leaner, single-project operation is real, and it falls on people who made the games that defined the studio's reputation.
Our take
Reducing one of the most respected studios in the industry to a single greenlit project is a stark bet. Marathon now carries enormous weight: if it succeeds, Sony's reorganization looks disciplined; if it stumbles, Bungie's independence and identity are genuinely at risk. The loss of most of the Destiny team and the departure of longtime leadership drain institutional knowledge that is hard to rebuild. The human cost is real, and so is the strategic gamble. Bungie has survived reinventions before, but this is the narrowest its future has looked in a long time.
Original analysis by GenZTech. Details current as of July 2026. Layoff figures per Washington WARN filings and reporting via GeekWire.