In a newly surfaced report, it appears Bungie veterans Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy have parted ways with Bungie, following the company-wide layoff that affected 17% of its staff on Wednesday.
Update, August 1, 7:37 PM: Grubb has clarified that Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy were not “laid off” but instead that they left on their own accord.
“They left as part of the restructuring. The difference there being, they understood what was happening and left of their own accord, or made their own separate deal.”
Original Story: Smith and Noseworthy, who have played pivotal roles in shaping the Destiny franchise, have reportedly left Bungie after the studio shelved Payback which was the “next big Destiny” project.
This comes from the credible insider Jeff Grubb, who shared the news during today’s Game Mess Decides episode.
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“Luke Smith and Mark Noseowrhty are no longer at Bungie,” Grubb said. “They were let go. They are no longer at Bungie.
“Payback is on the shelf. The strategy now is; let’s take Destiny 2 and we are going to make smaller experience packs that are six months, instead of the annual expansion packs they’ve done before.
“They’ll be smaller experience packs going forward. And the whole idea is, let’s spend less to make less so that we can have a Destiny 2 that costs less, and then maybe it’ll make enough money to make more sense going forward.
“In the meantime, we keep working on Marathon, and Frontiers is the name for the current strategy of shifting to these two-a-year experience pack thing. They are going to do Frontiers, and they are going to do Marathon, and if both of those things work out, they will then revisit what the future of Destiny will be at that point. So, the future of Destiny is basically on hold.”
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Luke Smith served as the executive creative director for the Destiny universe, while Mark Noseworthy was the vice president of Destiny.
In the blog post released earlier this week, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons said that the studio is “deepening our integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment, working to integrate 155 of our roles, roughly 12%, into SIE over the next few quarters. SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify roles for as many of our people as possible, enabling us together to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force.”
