IGN just put out an article of investigative journalism in coordination with (ex and current) Bungie employees. Article link: https://www.ign.com/articles/bungie-devs-say-atmosphere-is-soul-crushing-amid-layoffs-cuts-and-fear-of-total-sony-takeover?utm_source=twitter It’s a very juicy article that brings forth the experiences of employees and how they currently feel working at Bungie. Here’s a brief summary: - Employee morale at an all-time low (beloved and “natural leader” employees fired) [spoiler]"I’m angry. I’m upset. This isn’t what I came here to do,” one person said. “It feels like many higher ups aren’t listening to the data and are like, ‘We just need to win our fans back, they still like us.’ No. They don’t...We got rid of some of our most knowledgeable beloved folks who have been here for 20+ years. Everyday I walk in afraid that I or my friends are next. No one is safe."[/spoiler] - Employee frustration and sadness in the days and weeks following the layoffs was met with a surprising amount of indifference or even outright flippancy or hostility from management. - QA employees say they have had to take on a much bigger task, with management taking more and more disciplinary actions for “seemingly minor infractions”. They also perceive growing hostility from team and company leadership, including a meeting in which QA was said to be referred to by leaders as “non-developers.” - Employees call current atmosphere “soul-crushing” - Conflict of Interest between Sony - Bungie at the BoD (2 Sony, 3 Bungie, Pete Parsons to serve as tiebreaker vote) - Massive cuts to employee benefits, while Suits aren’t making any sacrifices. (Employees lost holiday bonuses, morale-boosting leisure activities, a big chunk of performance bonuses) - Bungie Suits have said that “they are not that type of company”, while answering employees about the possibility of Suits taking a pay cut. - Suits have tried to discourage employees from asking about potential future layoffs/ pay cuts. [b]- Sony [u]has the possibility[/u] to dismantle current BoD if Bungie continues to fail to meet fiscal expectations by large margins, meaning Sony could take over Bungie[/b] - Sentiment of “us vs them” with employees regarding the Suits; trust has been broken. [b]- Suits say that layoffs are a “lever” that they would be willing to pull again[/b] Essentially saying that they would rather layoff more employees to try and keep their control over Bungie to delay what could be an inevitable Sony takeover. Here’s a particularly hard-hitting quote from the article: [quote]It’s a well-known, long-standing studio that, despite historic culture problems, had managed to cultivate an increasingly positive community of fans around a beloved game while improving its own internal culture by gradual degrees. But in the wake of an acquisition that shocked many Bungie employees we’ve spoken to, and which seemed out of character with the studio’s independent streak, it feels to many like that’s all falling apart. Beloved colleagues have been laid off, benefits are vanishing, and many feel the “more people-oriented” (as one source put it) culture of recent years is being torn to pieces by the very Bungie leaders that touted it for so long. And seemingly all so those same leaders can retain a vestige of control over a company that’s already been sold away anyway.[/quote] This could be an omen for things to come if the Suits don’t pull off a Nintendo move. (Suits, especially the CEO, took pay cuts to spare employees from having to get fired/ taking pay cuts)