RIP Bungie? Sony just laid off a huge chunk of Bungie, and Destiny may be done
The layoffs aren’t a rumor anymore. Sony cut most of the Destiny team and some of Marathon, the studio head is out, and the company that made Halo and Destiny is now smaller and fighting for its life.
The Bungie layoffs everyone feared are no longer a maybe. They happened today.
Sony confirmed it’s cutting a large number of jobs at Bungie, the legendary studio behind Halo and Destiny. And the details are rough: most of the Destiny team is gone, the studio head has left, and the company is betting its future on a single struggling game.
What was announced
Here’s the official word, straight from Sony.
Hermen Hulst, the CEO of Sony’s studio group, sent a letter to staff, also posted publicly, confirming the cuts. They hit “a significant number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members,” plus some Sony staff who supported Bungie.
Sony didn’t give an exact number. But Forbes reporter Paul Tassi says the layoffs could affect as much as half of the studio. Bungie’s headcount was already around 800, down from roughly 1,300 in its pandemic-era peak after earlier rounds of cuts.
In its own statement, Bungie was blunt: “we recognize Destiny 2 fell short of expectations these past several years.”
Destiny appears to be over
This is the part that stings for longtime fans.
Destiny 2 released its final content update on June 9, 2026. That’s it. The live-service shooter that millions of people poured years into has stopped getting new content, and there’s no Destiny 3 on the way.
Bungie says its next project is still in “early incubation,” which is industry-speak for “years away, nowhere near done.” So the studio laid off most of the Destiny team because, without a new Destiny to build, there was nothing to put them on.
A decade-plus era of one of gaming’s biggest franchises just quietly ended.
The studio head is gone too
In an unusual twist, the cuts reached the top.
Justin Truman, Bungie’s studio head, has left the company the same day, according to reporting from Jason Schreier at Bloomberg and Tassi at Forbes. Truman had only held the role since August 2025, after taking over from former boss Pete Parsons. He’d been at Bungie since 2010, on the Destiny team.
The reports say Truman “stepped down,” but it’s unclear whether he left on his own or was pushed by Sony. Either way, it’s notable. Usually in a mass layoff, it’s the rank-and-file developers who take the hit while leadership stays. Seeing the studio head go out the same day signals just how deep these changes run.
Everything now rides on Marathon
So what’s left? Mostly one game, and it’s wobbling.
Marathon, Bungie’s extraction shooter that launched this year, is now the studio’s only active title. Sony says it “remains an important part” of the PlayStation portfolio and that the team will keep supporting it.
The problem is that Marathon underperformed. It got a big jump in players when it briefly went free-to-play, but its Steam player count has since settled back to about where it started. It’s not the runaway hit Sony needed to offset Destiny winding down.
So Bungie’s future now rests on a game that hasn’t proven it can carry the studio.
How Bungie got here
To understand today, you have to go back to 2022.
Sony bought Bungie for $3.6 billion that year. At the time it looked like a power move. But according to one former Bungie worker, the deal was actually an “emergency acquisition,” and without it, the studio would have been “very close to shutting its doors.”
If that’s accurate, it reframes everything. Sony didn’t buy a thriving studio, it rescued a struggling one, and several years later, the problems that made the rescue necessary haven’t gone away. Destiny faded, Marathon underwhelmed, and the bill came due today.
The human cost
Strip away the business talk, and here’s what actually happened today.
Hundreds of people, possibly half a studio, lost their jobs. Developers, artists, designers, community staff, many of whom spent years making games millions of people loved, are now figuring out what comes next.
Sony says it’s offering transition support and trying to place some affected workers elsewhere in its network. That helps, but it doesn’t change the hard reality for the people getting the news. This is another brutal entry in what’s been a punishing stretch of layoffs across the entire game industry.
For now, Bungie carries on, smaller, leaner, without Destiny, and with a lot riding on whether Marathon can finally find its footing.
The studio that gave us Halo and Destiny isn’t gone. But today it got a lot smaller, and a lot more uncertain.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
Sony Interactive Entertainment (June 25, 2026), Hermen Hulst’s official statement, verified for the layoffs hitting most of the Destiny team and some Marathon staff, the portfolio-review reasoning, and the transition-support details
Kotaku and Windows Central (June 25, 2026), verified for the ~800 headcount down from ~1,300, the June 9 final Destiny 2 update, the “early incubation” next project, and the $3.6 billion 2022 acquisition plus “emergency acquisition” claim
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg and Paul Tassi / Forbes (June 25, 2026), verified for studio head Justin Truman stepping down the same day, the “unclear if voluntary” framing, and the “up to half the studio” layoff estimate
TheGamer and GameSpot (June 25, 2026), verified for Truman’s background, the Marathon player-count context, and the Destiny-team-without-a-project reasoning