It’s a sad case of another day, another round of mass layoffs at a game studio. On this occasion, Destiny developer Bungie has announced it is letting go of 220 employees, or 17% of its workforce. CEO Pete Parsons said the eliminations were due to “financial challenges,” which isn’t going down well, especially after it was discovered he may have spent over $2.4 million on classic cars after Sony acquired the company, and continued buying them even after the previous layoffs.
Bungie blames the job eliminations on “rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions.” The Sony subsidiary says it needs to make substantial changes to its cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon.
The cuts will impact every level of the company, including executives and senior leader roles – but not Parsons, obviously.
It was only in October 2023 that Bungie made its last round of layoffs, and the news comes just under two months since the launch of Destiny 2: The Final Shape, which has been well-received.
In December, Bungie devs told IGN that the atmosphere at the company was “soul-crushing” due to fears of more layoffs, extra cost-cutting measures, and a loss of all independence from Sony if Bungie’s financials did not improve. Staff said earlier this year that they feared more job cuts were coming.
The latest layoffs have led to many angry posts on social media from current and former Bungie employees. Destiny 2’s global community lead Dylan Gafner (AKA dmg04) called the move “inexcusable,” and noted that it’s a case of “Accountability falling upon the workers who have pushed the needle to deliver for our community time and time again.”
What’s angering people even further is the discovery of what seems to be Parsons’ account on a car bidding site called Bring a Trailer. It shows he has spent $2.4 million on classic cars since September 2022, which includes $500,000 since the October layoffs.
Nobody deserves to be able to buy $2.4mil of toys. Period. This guy is gross.
Meh imperfect world. Let’s just say it would be nice if the talent got useful recognition too, which shifts the scales.
I’m sure you didn’t mean anything more by it, but “meh, imperfect world” is the same logic employed by Christian apologists and and fundies too lazy to assess suffering rationally and honestly.
We should reject that kind of thinking, because it only leads to apathy and/or willful ignorance.
Is it really wasteful though? Especially if they’re classic cars, it’s not like the money is thrown out the window. The value is still here, just in car form instead of stock/bank account form.
Now vain on the other hand…
It’s wasteful to own more than one or two cars, let alone dozens regardless of how well they hold value.
I believe it’s peer pressure once you have that kind of money. They are so far from reality they just don’t think about it. All their cocaine-buddies ramble about how they “deserve it” to throw money out of the window, they worked so hard yadda-yadda.
It’s bonkers. But I also never had that kind of money. Maybe we would all do the same thing?
Maybe we would all do the same thing?
That’s precisely my point. That kind of wealth should not be allowed, specifically because it seems to lead to this kind of behavior. Rare is the wealthy philanthropist; common is the wealthy psychopath.
The question is: can a wealthy philantropist do more good than a wealthy psychopath can do harm? Buying cars is not really bad per se, it just shows they don’t care for anything but themselves. Spending money on research to solve global warming on the other hand…
Edit: I’m just playing devils advocat. I know it is no solution to all our problems and I hate cumulation of wealth in the hands of a few. But thats the world we live in and I just try to find a silver lining.
Keeping the wealthy is unethical. They’re not getting the right food for their dietary needs and their enrichment activities are unhealthy. We also can’t release them back into the wild because they haven’t learned the survival skills they need. We really need a rich people zoo where people can go visit them and learn about how capitalism has prevented them from being able to live the healthy normal lives their physiology was built for
I believe it’s peer pressure once you have that kind of money. They are so far from reality they just don’t think about it. All their cocaine-buddies ramble about how they “deserve it” to throw money out of the window, they worked so hard yadda-yadda.
There was a fantastic write up on Reddit 6 or 7 years ago where a person that rubbed shoulders with the rich explained the drastic differences in behavior between different strata of the rich. He cited there are absolutely those that spend excessively to try to appear more rich than they are. I think the net worth of this category was between $20 million and $200 million (those numbers are from memory). Above that those rich largely don’t do that anymore, and are surprisingly more practical. If someone has a link to that, I’d love a re-read of it. It was very eye opening.
I was awarded a patent that was going to make mine and the company it supported a lot of money. (Of course I didn’t get any of it, but whatever) I was invited to go have steaks with the customer company and to pack some comfortable clothes, spend a few days in Texas. What I didn’t realize was who was going to be there.
We didn’t have steaks in the normal way of let’s sit down at the fancy building and eat. It was the board of directors, those guys who own the company. They wanted to take the engineers out for a few days. When the management and CEO tried to come along, they did a “why are you talking to us? Get back to work”. They wanted to hear about how we came up with this stuff.
Took their Suburban convoy out to an oasis country club and we were given some pants and new shirts. Nothing special I thought, but they were some special member’s club gift they give out. We went shooting, and their shotguns cost more than my house. Told them I feel weird holding it. “Nah! If you drop it it’s fine! Can get another one”
These guys had more money than I could fathom, but none of it seemed show-off, Gucci handbag level stuff. It was all made to look like nicer stuff you would buy from Macy’s. It was all custom tailored just for them. They didn’t need to show off to each other at that point. It was a fun couple of days. We stayed there, I had a room all to myself that was more like a master bedroom than a hotel.
I tried to find out where breakfast was and the staff laughed. “It’s ok, what would you like? We will bring it to your room.”
I’m all for fixing the system but why does the employee CEO of company not get to spend his wages on whatever he wants just like the rest of us?
Was it company money he spent it on? Is he a maj shareholder?
That’s the thing, it might have been company funds. Back when Sony bought Bungie, they made a giant fund for severance in case of layoffs, so that devs would have a bit of a safety net if worst came to worst. Fast forward to October 30th, 2023, and that money is just… Gone with the wind. My facts may be a little muddled but I’m fairly certain that’s how it played out.
The short of it is: why is he making that much money in the first place, especially at a time where the game’s industry has seen record-breaking layoffs for the past 2 years - worse than during the 2008 financial crash.
The long of it is that they’re symptoms of the same problem and show the ever increasing wealth disparity between the aristocracy and the commoners in the US. In 2020, the wealth disparity in the US was said to be on par with France just before the French Revolution, where the price of a loaf of bread hit a full day’s wages for the average worker. To add to this, at least one of the people laid off was going on scheduled maternity leave the next day, which is probably in violation of some workers’ rights law, but because the majority of states are “at will” employment states, Bungie won’t face any consequences. The average time for people in the industry to find a new job is 2-4 months, and with all the layoffs, plenty of these people will never work in the industry again. And on top of that, these workers are already exploited so badly for their passion for making games that they could see a 50% or more pay increase with lower responsibilities for the same skill set just by changing industries. There are people working at Activision-Blizzard-King who are living out of their cars because they don’t get paid enough to afford rent within commuting distance of the studio.
People are waking up to the fact that the boss makes 10 grand while we make a dime, and they’re getting pretty pissed about it.
People are pointing out the juxtaposition of many people losing their jobs while one person spends silly amounts of money on toys. It’s not that he spent it on toys, it’s that he made so much that he was able to waste it on frivolity while others around him suffered.
removed, stop buying your metal scrap and pay your devs. I wanna play Marathon this century
TAX THE FUCKING RICH!!!
70% of that $2.4 million should have been taxed and he can do whatever he wants with the remaining money. OR he can get paid what he actually deserves and leave the rest for the company to become stronger.
70% of that $2.4 million should have been taxed
It’s literally post-tax income already, lol.
You lot are constantly talking about how workers are uniformly short-changed on their labor by their employers, underpaid for it and therefore being a profit source for employers, but you never explain why any business would do layoffs like this if that was the case, lol. Do these people who got laid off make the company money or not?
Maybe he’ll crash while driving one, and the limited safety features will ensure we’ll be rid of the asshole
… causing the board to hire another equally expensive CEO, – This time he’s into PLANES though!
What’s next after that? Someone into experimental submarines made of questionably reliable carbon fiber? Because I saw that movie before and uh, spoiler alert
