Bungie announces mass layoffs, 220 roles to be "eliminated"

Bungie fucked up but not realizing what was cool about Destiny and turning it into an ass GaaS. Its one of those games with a fantastic world, art, and even fantastic mechanics, all getting fucked by the ceaseless content wheel. Live Service is the Lich to all of our Finn & Jakes.

Live Service is the Lich to all of our Finn & Jakes.
I think that there's a perfectly reasonable role for live service games. There are things that you can do with it that you just can't do without it. It's a legitimate way to spend time playing games with other people online and have a constant stream of new content come out. I don't personally really go in for that type of game, but I entirely understand people who do.
I just don't want every game out there to be turned into a live service game.
And I also kind of suspect that there are too many developers trying to fight for too-little live service game demand.
Hot take: As someone that's played every Destiny 2 expansion, all the dungeons, and some of the raids... The game has pretty basic mechanics and a ... rather uninteresting ... collection of worlds that most players only ever pass through.
The mechanics include: dodging, healing, dropping a barrier, jumping, sliding, grenades, melee attacks, supers, and throwing or depositing a ball ... and a few other things they rarely use; that covers like 90% of the content.
The open world STILL all these years later feels like a place where they just hide filler chores, not a destination or particularly fun. Even when we get a new planet, it often just feels like a reskin of an older planet that's been rearranged. Compare that to a game like Remnant II where EVERY planet feels very very different, has unique characteristics and quirks, and lots of distinct enemy types. Even the $10 DLCs for Remnant that just expand a world add more than Bungie tends to add in a $100 expansion in terms of new interesting encounters, enemy types, and level design.
The music, (now dated) graphics, gun design, some exceptional boss fights, and unlock grind (that gives you that same RuneScape grind "oooo I did it" feeling) carry pretty hard.
Bungie built something between a MMO and a co-op campaign game that ... lacks the scale of a MMO and (in many areas) lacks the level design of a co-op game. It's gotten better over the years ... but I'm not sure if I'll be picking up the next expansion personally.
- I agree with you mostly. But for me, the raids were fucking peak. I could play a game that just focuses on that.
- What about Destiny 1? That was cool. Everywhere felt different.

Guys! Guys, please think of the poor shareholders tho. Aren't they the real victims here? My heart break this evening knowing they almost had to endure very slightly reduced profits this quarter. Thank God there was something that could be done to prevent such a horrific situation.

Someone there was supposed to help me get a job, but I woke up to them telling me about this instead.

Good news! There will be a lot of job postings soon, just at lower rates than the layoffs.
- Doubtful. Bungie has been hemorrhaging employees.

So who is going to develop the games, the executive team and the CEO?

Outsourced to an indian firm. The next expansion will be fire!
- Lol. Indian firms can barely code websites well. Imagine them trying to code, do art, sound, level design and everything else a game needs. Yeah, the next expansion is going to fire.

Well, I guess that kills the Destiny 3 rumors. Shame, I have played D2 since Forsaken and it is still pretty fun. I guess I should have bought more silver.

Good, fuck Bungie

Finally the milking is stopping. Should have stopped at 3, but they had to suck more money out of that franchise.

I assume you're talking about Halo, which Bungie hasn't had anyone to do with for years.
- Ah yes. I forgot.

Bungie hasn't made a good game since 2010, they deserve it.

Bungie hasn't made a good game since 2010, they deserve it.
No they don’t, you ghoul.
You don’t get hired at Bungie by being a shitty game dev.
You make shitty games or get fired by having shitty management or a parent company run by a shitty exec.
Shit like this is what is making the game industry suck and why you are seeing more bugs and more garbage and as long as companies fire people after every project, and no one sticks around, it’s likely to just keep worsening things.
Do you know why Elden Ring, Mario, and Zelda games are good?
It’s because the devs at Nintendo and From Software have people in charge who have been making games for like 30 goddamn years and have become literal masters of their craft.
Meanwhile, all the companies making shitty games are firing people as soon as their game ships and chasing trends instead of focusing on fundamentals of good game mechanics and gameplay design.
…And so then the next quarter when they need more warm bodies to ship something, they basically have to hire a bunch of 20-something fresh graduates who generally have no idea what they’re doing, pay them next to nothing, give them unrealistic deadlines, crunch the shit out of them, burn them out, and then repeat the cycle.
That’s at least one of the reasons why even industry celebrities like Cliff Blezinski got out of making games.
Not a fan of Joe Rogan, but go watch John Carmack - one of the singular greatest programmers of the last 40 years and basically also one of the creators of the FPS - tell Rogan that game dev is harder and less secure and pays less than Facebook.
It’s why most game studios’ average tenure is around 5 years… and why a lot of people (myself included) left… because the pay and job stability is better in adjacent careers like just general software dev.
These people are trying to make games that they are passionate about. No game dev gets into it to make money or micro transactions… especially not someone who would want to work for a studio that once crafted flagship titles like Bungie or Blizzard or any of the other big name studios.
People telling game devs that they “should lose their jobs” really need to redirect their ire toward the private equity bean-counting suits - who are making off like bandits while absolutely gutting the future of an industry I fucking guarantee is having its legs cut out from under it by shit like this.
Edit : Holy shit some of the absolute chirplords in the thread below really make me happy I got out of making games. To anyone still soldiering on in the trench that is video game dev work, I salute you... I really wish you had the fortitude to still do it, but I'm a mere mortal. Here's to hoping you guys are able to get what you need and that the suits just get out of the way.
- Also Destiny was a damn good game, with great map design, enemy design, and world building. I don't know how you blame the developers for the clearly top level decisions to turn the game into a content treadmill where everything was undeveloped and disposable.
- Bungie literally deleted content I paid for. They can get bent, they have lost myself and my money, among others, as customers permanently. The result of the company getting less money means people get let go. That's how business works.
  Any person that keeps working with a company that actively harms its customers is not a person that I will support. My personal work ethic and integrity could never allow me to continue to work in such a dishonest place of work. I quit on the spot when one of my old bosses told me to lie and tell a customer that they needed parts replaced for their car that they didn't need so he could charge them more. Walked across the street and got a job at the competing shop the same day, and ended up getting paid more. If you are good at your job (as good as you seem to think all Bungie employees are), then finding another job will be easy. Sucks for the few good people that might work there, but if they get let go they will have the opportunity to work somewhere better. If they're a good person, they will likely pick a place that doesn't actively harm its own customers (and employees).
- Bungie shits in your mouth, consistently, over the course of D1's life cycle.
  "No it's not Bungie, it's Activision!"
  Bungie splits from Activision in D2
  Proceeds to release Shadowkeep
  "Crickets"
  Fast forward to Lightfall.
  "Noooo, it's Sony! Sony is at fault!"
  God damn, the excuses Destiny players make for what is a shit company will never cease to amuse me. Idk what Bungie's collective cum tastes like but it must be fucking ambrosia considering the lengths the community goes to defend them. That corpo-speak in the TWABs is puttin' in work!
The workers don't. The executives do.