Paul Tassi: Layoffs at Bungie - Happening Now.

ReBurn said:
Probably going to use the resources of the mothership for some of those roles. PlayStation corporate likely has lawyers and recruiters and tweeters that can do some of that for them.

Perhaps most surprising but not really all that surprising is cuts to QA. It's been a QA slaughter this year. QA seems to always be the first job to get cut.
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Because time and time again its been shown you can release a game in poor state and it does not matter as long as the "game" is good enough. It is mental that QA is the first to go despite it being quite pivotal to releasing a good, quality built game.
 
Unemployment at record lows in decades. GDP is up at the highest rate in years. Bungie is raking in money hand over fist by selling endless expansions and stupid dance moves and shit. Publishers are selling ports of games that were made before our children were born with slight upgrades at $70 and many (including myself) seem to be snapping it up.

So, time to layoff a bunch of people?

Just a reminder Sony doesn't love any of us or any of their workers. A faceless corporate entity that must be forever fed more and more money. Remember that the next time you want to console war like a teenager at recess.
 
BadBurger said:
Unemployment at record lows in decades. GDP is up at the highest rate in years. Bungie is raking in money hand over fist by selling endless expansions and stupid dance moves and shit. Publishers are selling ports of games that were made before our children were born with slight upgrades at $70 and many (including myself) seem to be snapping it up.

So, time to layoff a bunch of people?

Just a reminder Sony doesn't love any of us or any of their workers. A faceless corporate entity that must be forever fed more and more money. Remember that the next time you want to console war like a teenager at recess.
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what a weird comment
 
VanCityGamer said:
I'm so glad you guys feel the same way I do about that guy. It is downright creepy how obsessed he is with Xbox. He does constant free marketing for them. And he defended them all through their drought of games, even at the worst times.
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I always assumed he was getting compensation since he leaked MCC back when the xbone PR disaster was happening.

They fired mclees and salvatori so… Bungie as it was is officially dead and gone imo. Husk of what it once was.
 
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Sony should consider releasing their Playstation games day 1 on PC to improve their finances too to help prevent the layoffs
 
Bry0 said:
They fired mclees and salvatori so… Bungie as it was is officially dead and gone imo. Husk of what it once was.
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Yep. Bungie is now in the same category I place studios like BioWare: Studio In Name Only. They'll use the Bungie name to market products ("From the developers of Halo and Destiny...") but the vast majority of the people responsible for their successes are long gone.
 
See this is why getting paid (often much) less at a proper Japanese company (with a permanent employment (seishain) contract) is not 100% that bad over the long term. Sony (culturally) seems to be getting less and less Japanese by the year.

Sure you might get paid way more at a US company but you also run the risk of getting axed out of the blue because the company missed its profit target by a hair or something. That practically never happens in Japan. Typically Japanese companies have to be in real deep shit to justify laying off scores of staff (ie redundancies).
 
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supernova8 said:
See this is why getting paid (often much) less at a Japanese company (with a permanent employment (seishain) contract) is not 100% that bad over the long term.

Sure you might get paid way more at a US company but you also run the risk of getting axed out of the blue because the company missed its profit target by a hair or something. That practically never happens in Japan. Typically Japanese companies have to be in real deep shit to justify laying off scores of staff (ie redundancies).
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One of my earliest post-college jobs was for the American arm of a big Japanese corpo. As I departed to a new gig they were taking massive losses in a bad downturn of the economy. Instead of laying people off they offered them 10%-20% pay decreases instead (depending upon positions). Still sucks, but at least they kept the people employed and with benefits.

I compare that to my short time working for - well, I won't type the company name out just in case I'm still beholden to some legal shit - but after working for them for one month they didn't earn as many millions as they did in the year before, so they laid off my manager and promoted me into his place without a raise. I found a new job a month later.
 
ArtHands said:
Sony should consider releasing their Playstation games day 1 on PC to improve their finances too to help prevent the layoffs
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Microsoft laid off 16K while on Record profits.

These are pure capitalist moves, lay off people you don't need while improve revenues and generate more profits while improving your stock market situation.

Companies are not your friends.
 
supernova8 said:
See this is why getting paid (often much) less at a proper Japanese company (with a permanent employment (seishain) contract) is not 100% that bad over the long term. Sony (culturally) seems to be getting less and less Japanese by the year.

Sure you might get paid way more at a US company but you also run the risk of getting axed out of the blue because the company missed its profit target by a hair or something. That practically never happens in Japan. Typically Japanese companies have to be in real deep shit to justify laying off scores of staff (ie redundancies).
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Does that even matter when talking about the American branch of a Japanese company?
For example, I've seen news about layoffs happening in Square Enix, Inc. (United States), but I'm pretty sure you will never see that being the case with the Japanese branch (Square Enix Co., Ltd.).
 
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Ronin_7 said:
Microsoft laid off 16K while on Record profits.

These are pure capitalist moves, lay off people you don't need while improve revenues and generate more profits while improving your stock market situation.

Companies are not your friends.
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I don't think my post is related to Microsoft at all
 
Jinzo Prime said:
He's referencing these tweets that came from Sony during Microsoft's lay-off period:





Not defending that twat, just playing devil's advocate.
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I think both of these were offering real job opportunities, related to at least a part of the professionalities that were let free. None of the jobs offer in that tweet has anything to offer to the people let go from Bungie, except , maybe, for 2 role as producers at T10
 
Ronin_7 said:
Microsoft laid off 16K while on Record profits.

These are pure capitalist moves, lay off people you don't need while improve revenues and generate more profits while improving your stock market situation.

Companies are not your frfriends.
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When was this? I'm sure it was 10k and we all know the reasons behind the layoffs don't we? Also the poster you responded to never mentioned Microsoft so cool down with the fanboy antics.
 
Ronin_7 said:
Microsoft laid off 16K while on Record profits.

These are pure capitalist moves, lay off people you don't need while improve revenues and generate more profits while improving your stock market situation.

Companies are not your friends.
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Aside the current layoffs at Bungie has nothing to do with Microsoft, Microsoft has hired 40k since 2020 and fired 10k. And that's for the whole Microsoft. Not just gaming, where aside 343 they hadn't been that many layoffs at all (which is funny considering how the community wanted Microsoft to disband 343).
 
Killer8 said:
Yeah, get a job at Xbox and then get laid off from there too. Did he just forget Microsoft also axed 10,000 employees in January and then another 1000 in July? It's an industry wide problem.

Klobrille will never let an opportunity to bat for Xbox pass him by though. Quite possibly the most pathetic creature online given how much effort he puts in for free.
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He's got 151k followers.
If he tweets something, it will most likely earn him money.
Negotiator101 said:
When was this? I'm sure it was 10k and we all know the reasons behind the layoffs don't we?
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I could be wrong here, but in Microsoft's case it wouldn't surprise me if over the past few years they hired a lot of people whose "work" doesn't actually benefit the company. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that these jobs will get terminated as soon as someone takes a closer look.
 
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Goalus said:
He's got 151k followers.
If he tweets something, it will most likely earn him money.

I could be wrong here, but in Microsoft's case it wouldn't surprise me if over the past few years they hired a lot of people whose "work" doesn't actually benefit the company. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that these jobs will get terminated as soon as someone takes a closer look.
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Possibly but I'm of the opinion that talk of Microsoft in here is not needed that's why I replied to that poster. Obviously with all the bad news recently regarding PlayStation HQ and now Bungie (Sony owned Studio) things are not looking great over there currently.
 
Negotiator101 said:
Possibly but I'm of the opinion that talk of Microsoft in here is not needed that's why I replied to that poster. Obviously with all the bad news recently regarding PlayStation HQ and now Bungie (Sony owned Studio) things are not looking great over there currently.
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Absolutely. Just recently I got called out for "console warring" by bringing a Sony game into an unrelated discussion, but looking at this thread it seems to be very common to change the topic whenever it is convenient.
 
Wondering if this is related to The Final Shape and Marathon getting delayed.
 
ArtHands said:
  • Jim Ryan
  • PlayStation Visual Arts
  • Naughty Dog (contractual)
  • Connie Booth
  • Media Molecule
And now Bungie.

Why is Sony breaking record sales and shits but getting rid of so many people?
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At this point I start to think that Jimbo's retire is not a really retire.

- Jimbo's push for the gaas initiative, puttting studios like Naughty Dog to develop these type of games;
- Studios pipeline became a mess, with multiples projects but not a solid one;
- Connie Booth have fail to manage these multi-project studios;
- Seeing all this mess, Sony leadership was think: let's go back. Jimbo have sell a lot of consoles, so let's say he will "retire". Connie have show extreme inability to manage these studios and left their pipeline completly broken, we need left her too.

I'm joking around with all this, but some things may be true.
 
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Superkewl said:
I am not a Destiny guy, but I thought it was a massively popular game. Is that not the case?
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Who are still talking about it other than us lot in this thread? I can't remember hearing any of my colleagues or friends even mention this game. Last time I heard about this game outside of this forum was when the game came out.
 
Cyberpunkd said:
Checks software companies enjoying record profits…

Hd Pursed Lips GIF
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Believe it or not i play good games, not based on who made them..
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
I think this highlights a bigger problem with SIE: the idea everything needs to be big, huge AAA in order to justify its existence. That just simply isn't the case.
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Isn't it abundantly clear that that isn't SIE's mentality?
I'm not going to go over the recent list of precious little games that SIE has either published or supported have that are not AAA releases; but I will say that I think things need to matter to justify their existence, especially right now.

Dreams for example didn't matter and would never have mattered. They should've cut that cord long time ago.
 
Anyone think there will be more layoffs at Sony in the coming months? Seems a lot getting the axes recently
 
Clearly what happened, Sony parent went to PlayStation and was like, "Hey you need to change your budget because of economic uncertainty." That led to canceled projects and layoffs. The problem is, that Sony had an inflated budget for 2021, 2022, and 2023. So not only do they need to come back down to earth, they have to reduce spending.

Most likely Jim left because he didn't agree with the new budget. Ideally he wanted to spend more on acquisitions, have internal studios working on 2-3 games, not cut from anywhere.

Anyone working on a canceled game was let go. Their FR is next week, I am dying to see if they say how many games are in production. They could of canceled as many as 5 games. Games I would be worried about:

TLOU MP (dead)
Deviation's game (dead)
Twisted Metal
Continued Dreams support, PC, PS5, PS VR2, yada yada (Dead)
other game at Naughty Dog that is not TLOU3
MP game at SuckerPunch
Whatever was going on at Visual Arts (Uncharted Remake?)
Anything VR

Games clearly still alive
Bluepoints new IP
Ghost 2
Horizon 3
Horizon MP
MLB
Asobi AAA game
Wolverine
Follow up Spider-Man 2 content
Housemarque
Santa Monica game after GOWR


I would go as far as to say both Fairgames and Concord are up in the air.
 
schaft0620 said:
Clearly what happened, Sony parent went to PlayStation and was like, "Hey you need to change your budget because of economic uncertainty."
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I don't think so. It is in Sony's best interest to ensure PlayStation's leadership in the industry, and if that would require more expenditure and a bigger budget, they would do so.

Play Station has a good track record of fixing their internal bullshit. This is what is happening.
 
ChorizoPicozo said:
I don't think so. It is in Sony's best interest to ensure PlayStation's leadership in the industry, and if that would require more expenditure and a bigger budget, they would do so.

Play Station has a good track record of fixing their internal bullshit. This is what is happening.
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Fixing internal bullshit, as in firing a longtime employee that wasn't onboard with the GaaS initiative.

They're fixing it alright. GaaS isn't going anywhere.
 
Interfectum said:
Games as a Service is crashing and burning. You have 5-6 games at the top that dominate and the rest just fall into oblivion. These high level execs know this and don't give a fuck... they'll just keep throwing bodies at it hoping they hit the Fortnite lotto too and there is very little consequence for them if they fail.
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Very true. GAAS should be an exception, not the norm in the industry. Gamers will naturally gravitate to the top 5 games in the market over a period of many years and spend their money on that. We don't need every video game to be GAAS.
 
Should have never left activision been mostly down hill from then.
 
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Unknown? said:
The jobs numbers are faked(and honestly always have been). They always look great upon release until you look deeper and see most added jobs are people taking second jobs, not adding to the work force. Then after several months they go back and revise the data much lower while no one is paying attention and suddenly the numbers look pretty bad.
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Nah. The bolded doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes they go back and increase the amount of jobs added. It kinda goes both ways there.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Most of their PC ports sell so few copies with hardly anyone playing on Steam (current or all time high users) the revenue gained from them wont even move the needle. Even if the porting development costs were zero with no 30% cut for Valve and GOG, it still wouldnt move the needle.

So they got some options:

1. Day one ports to boost up usage so PC gamers dont treat them as 3 year old leftovers
2. Status quo porting. Hey, maybe Sony is happy with Returnal selling hardly any copies. As long it makes any profits thats good enough to port over
3. Junk all the porting and funnel the resources for more PS games

No doubt this was their thinking when PC porting strategies were being tossed in board rooms..... release some key hits on PC a few years later + rake in the bucks from PC gamers who dont game on PS = big bonus bucks at no risk.

In reality (for whatever reason), their PC hits ports sell hardly any copies as the huge PC user base doesn't give a shit.
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Doing number 1 here would be the worst thing Playstation could ever do. No way, no how.
 
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