Sony's $3.6B Studio Has No New Game After Destiny 2

Three point six billion dollars. That's what Sony paid for Bungie in 2022. Four years later, the studio is about to ship its final Destiny 2 update, has no sequel in production, and is staring down another round of layoffs with nothing new to build. According to a Bloomberg report, Bungie doesn't have a new project lined up for the Destiny 2 team once the game's last content drop lands on June 9, and there are no plans to immediately begin work on a Destiny 3.

Bungie confirmed the end of Destiny 2's active development in a blog post yesterday, framing it as a transition toward "incubating" new projects. Staff have reportedly pitched ideas, including games set in the Destiny universe, but according to Bloomberg's reporting, none have been greenlit. The studio's near-term focus will instead shift to supporting Marathon, the extraction shooter that launched earlier this year to decent reviews but hasn't found a large audience. I covered Bungie's situation yesterday, and the picture hasn't gotten any less bleak overnight.

This will be Bungie's third round of layoffs since the Sony acquisition. Around 100 employees were cut in October 2023, followed by roughly 220 more in July 2024, which brought the studio's headcount from approximately 1,200 down to around 850. Sony's most recent financial report included a $765 million impairment loss tied to Bungie assets, a fairly loud admission that the company overpaid.

The math here is brutal. Sony spent $3.6 billion on a studio whose flagship game is winding down, whose new release hasn't broken through commercially, and whose next project doesn't exist yet. I don't know how Sony's leadership justifies that price tag at this point. Former CEO Pete Parsons left in August 2025, replaced by Justin Truman, who now inherits a studio that needs to prove it can ship something worth playing before the money runs out. Destiny 2 will remain online and playable after June 9, much like the original Destiny still is today, but active development is done.