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Jeff Grubb: Hermen Hulst is now the man running Bungie, dev will lose it's autonomy

ZehDon

Member
... You don't need that many devs for that long just for One looter shooter game and it's DLC updates.
Yeah, hard to argue. Bungie has been bloated for a long time, and it looks like Sony is trimming the fat. When you drop 220 people and ultimately expect nothing to change except the balance sheet, it would indicate the company has more than a few coasters in its ranks. With that said, losing your job sucks, so I do spare a thought for the folks out of work today.
 
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Lupin25

Member
Bungie probably bled too much after the last expansion or 2, before The Final Shape.

They need to move onto Marathon soon. Hopefully, whatever they have impresses people. This live service thing is hard to keep up.
 
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Bungie just once again proving their incompetence. Sad from the studio that created Halo, they let their reputation go to their head and management decided to cash in on video game addiction. They are basically irrelevant now.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Former Bungie employees have said that the problem has always been Bungie's top management i.e. Pete. What a waste of great talent.
To be fair former employees pretty much always blame top management after they get fired, but in this case it tracks for Pete. He knew that Bungie was running out of steam when he made the deal.
 

Gambit2483

Member
Yeah, hard to argue. Bungie has been bloated for a long time, and it looks like Sony is trimming the fat. When you drop 220 people and ultimately expect nothing to change except the balance sheet, it would indicate the company has more than a few coasters in its ranks. With that said, losing your job sucks, so I do spare a thought for the folks out of work today.
I hate to say it but yeah there were probably a good number of career coasters in the organization. Basically being paid to do very minimal work and goals.
 
Bungie has been trash for 10 years. Maybe sony can help them refocus their efforts into creating Halo caliber game. Destiny quite frankly sucks ass.
2ZvMIT0.jpeg


Jk destiny sucks I just wanted an excuse to use that meme
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
There is a difference between a PS studio reporting to the PS CEO and the PS CEO "running" the studio.
It wouldn't be any different than Hermen running Naughty Dog or Bluepoint or Firesprite or Guerrilla etc.

It's not like Hermen would be acting as Head of Bungie. Bungie would just be reporting to Hermen now, as much as other PlayStation Studios does. Sounds completely normal to me.
 

Fess

Member
Bungie has been trash for 10 years. Maybe sony can help them refocus their efforts into creating Halo caliber game. Destiny quite frankly sucks ass.
To me it looks like Sony is eating them up from within, takes the resources that can be useful for a new studio and fills up positions on other teams and get rid of the rest and put in a new leadership on what’s left of the old studio.
When all seniors and executives are gone they aren’t just trimming the fat and can refocus. Seems more like two new studios are being formed and ”Bungie” is gone.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Except that is exactly what Grubb is implying, imo. Otherwise, why tweet that at all?
I don't think he was implying that. It's just a useless tweet. Here's why:

It's just that if PlayStation Studios overtakes Bungie (which was part of the deal, pending conditions), Hermen Hulst would automatically become the direct boss of Bungie.

And, to be honest, even if none of this happened, Hermen would still be the co-boss of Bungie by now. Bungie wasn't a part of PS Studios. They were under SIE, however, which meant they reported directly to Jim Ryan.

Jim Ryan is no longer the head of SIE, and Hermen is the co-boss of SIE now. So Bungie was under Hermen anyways.
 

Topher

Gold Member
I don't think he was implying that. It's just a useless tweet. Here's why:

It's just that if PlayStation Studios overtakes Bungie (which was part of the deal, pending conditions), Hermen Hulst would automatically become the direct boss of Bungie.

And, to be honest, even if none of this happened, Hermen would still be the co-boss of Bungie by now. Bungie wasn't a part of PS Studios. They were under SIE, however, which meant they reported directly to Jim Ryan.

Jim Ryan is no longer the head of SIE, and Hermen is the co-boss of SIE now. So Bungie was under Hermen anyways.

Yeah.....if he isn't implying that then it is indeed a useless tweet. Definitely a possibility.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Actually this makes sense if Herman takes over.

Reading over the Bungie tweet, included in the layoffs are most Bungie exec and senior roles. Third paragraph (under the bolded sentence). They'll get a golden parachute though. What they'll have left is maybe a couple key higher ups at Bungie and thats it. And they report to Herman.

GT01TXCXAAAvVQ_
 
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yurinka

Member
Actually this makes sense if Herman takes over.
Bungie is a fully owned SIE subsidiary that reports to the SIE CEO since the acquisition. SIE CEO that was Jim Ryan then, during the transition was Totoki (pretty likely who ordered these recently announced changes) and now is Hermen Hulst.

Hermen is in the board of directors of Bungie since the acquisition, and since became SIE co-CEO is also the CEO of the SIE Studio Business Group that includes both Bungie and PS Studios in addition to the related non-gaming adaptations of Bungie and PS Studios IPs.

He doesn't need to take over anything, he already is in charge.
 
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Dorago

Member
I can't believe they've ruined two trillion dollar deals in less than 10 years.

Neo-Bungie management is the best con artist in history.
 
I always find it interesting how people here without any clue what bungee next projects are how their Marathon game will turn out that they always shit immediately on everything and how lost they are so on.People learn to wait and see what is what and how it turns out.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
It seems this all is exactly what Bungie wants.

They lay off people of any role, including execs. With integrating into SIE, they say they now have the ability to start up their new project. With this move, Hermen is their boss anyway.
 
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It will be interesting to see if we get any official word on some kind of change or if the status quo just continues, at least as it looks from the outside. Sony has a good rep for putting their top studios in positions to succeed, it's not really a doom and gloom scenario regardless. The common idea that Sony didn't have a way to assume control if things were taking a negative turn always seemed far fetched to me, a situation where they would take over and shake up management is a lot more realistic.
 

Solarstrike

Member
This thread is more toxic than all the emissions expelled from Pete Parsons cars at the same time
 
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