Update, January 27, 6:09 am PT: In a statement to The Game Post, Bungie has now clarified that Sony “is not helping us develop Destiny.” Destiny currently has 650+ team members at Bungie.
It has been revealed that Bungie is using its PlayStation resources to create assets for Destiny, even though Sony is not directly involved in the game’s development. This explains the previously leaked weapon models.
Original story: Bungie has now confirmed that it has around 1,350 employees after the mass layoffs last year after a recent job listing mentioned the company’s workforce as 1,400.
In October 2023, the Sony-owned game developer Bungie, the studio behind Destiny and Marathon, laid off approximately 8% of its workforce. At the time, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported that the company had about 1,200 employees.
As per the details from the recent job ad, it was assumed that the company has expanded its workforce from 1,200 to 1,400 employees in just two months, even after laying off over 100 employees. However, it turns out that this is not the case and that Bungie is still in a hiring freeze with no “mass replacement of employees.”
Bungie is Getting Help from Sony on the Development Side
This is according to Forbes’ Paul Tassi, who recently received an update from Bungie in response to his article on the topic. According to the report, Bungie has “about 1,350 employees right now, which does not include contractors or Sony employees”.
Bungie has since updated the job listing on its careers website and has removed the 1,400 figure. It has also been officially confirmed that more than 650 employees are currently working on Destiny 2 — that is around half of the total workforce of 1,350.
Interestingly, the Game Director of Bungie’s new game Marathon, Christopher Barrett, revealed in August 2023 on The Fourth Curtain podcast that the company may have over 1,500 workers at the time.
Following the layoffs last year, Bungie removed over 40 open job positions from its careers website as part of the hiring freeze, going from around 75 positions to only 19.
The company has also confirmed that it is indeed getting help from Sony PlayStation on the development side, along with other contractors. However, it was also revealed that this is not a “new strategy” for the Destiny developer.
This speculation arose after an artist at Sony PlayStation unintentionally uploaded some artwork of unreleased Destiny weapon models with a PlayStation logo in the middle. The description mentioned that the weapon models and textures are from PlayStation Studios, something that had not been seen before.
Apart from their in-house contractors, Bungie has collaborated with a number of companies for various aspects of game development. These include cinematic trailers, in-game cinematics, weapons, and armor.
Some of the partners are SkyBox Labs, The Mill, Axis Studio, BOND, Rebound Sound Company, Bear Down Studios, Mind Walk Studios, TRACE Studio, Lakshya Digital, Krakter, and several others.
The Final Shape expansion for Destiny 2 is set to release on June 4, 2024. Additionally, Bungie is also working on a free content update called “Into the Light” that will bring new content to the game.