Quick Answer
Sony Interactive Entertainment laid off 292 full time staff at Bungie's Bellevue, Washington studio, with separation effective July 9, 2026, according to a WARN Act filing.
Studio Head Justin Truman is stepping down after less than a year in the role, replaced by 11 year Bungie veteran Poria Torkan, previously Vice President of Operations.
The cuts hit Destiny 2 and the newly launched extraction shooter Marathon hardest, with Sony confirming Destiny 2 has missed revenue expectations for several fiscal years.
What does the WARN filing actually say?
Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings are mandated when a US employer plans mass layoffs, and they put the numbers in writing. The Washington State filing confirms 292 full time positions at Bungie's Bellevue headquarters, with an official separation date of July 9, 2026. Independent reporting by GeekWire, Push Square, and Kotaku verified the figure on June 25.
The 292 number reflects only Bungie's direct headcount and does not include any internal Sony Interactive Entertainment staff also affected by the broader restructuring. Earlier industry estimates had floated a 400 figure across all Sony PlayStation Studios touch points, so the Bungie specific cut is the largest single component of the round.
Why is Sony cutting so deeply at Bungie?
In an internal memo, Hermen Hulst, CEO of Sony's Studio Business Group, told staff that Destiny 2 has consistently missed internal commercial revenue expectations across several fiscal years. With no plans to develop a Destiny 3, and Marathon still finding its early commercial footing after launch, Sony leadership concluded the studio could not justify operating at its previous headcount.
Bungie has been wound into Sony's Studio Business Group since the 3.6 billion dollar acquisition closed in 2022. That deal was premised on Bungie's live service expertise transferring across PlayStation's wider portfolio. Three years in, the live service unit Sony helped build has been wound down, the IPs that were supposed to anchor the unit have underperformed, and the studio that was supposed to teach the rest of PlayStation how to ship live games is now being dramatically resized.
Who is Poria Torkan, the new studio head?
Poria Torkan joined Bungie 11 years ago and most recently served as Vice President of Operations. He inherits a studio with three immediate priorities: stabilizing the live operations of Destiny 2 for an active player base, optimizing Marathon's economy and content cadence so the extraction shooter can sustain a viable concurrent player count across PlayStation 5 and PC, and restoring morale after a brutal round of cuts.
The choice signals continuity over disruption. Torkan is a known internal quantity rather than a Sony parachute hire, which gives the remaining team a familiar leadership face. Whether that is enough to retain senior creative talent over the next 12 months is the bigger question.
What does this mean for Destiny 2 and Marathon players?
For Destiny 2, the practical impact is a smaller live service team continuing to ship seasonal content on a leaner cadence. Sony's framing makes clear there is no Destiny 3 on the near term roadmap, so the franchise will live or die on the existing Destiny 2 platform.
For Marathon, the calculus is more delicate. The extraction shooter genre is crowded, and recapturing audience attention after a soft launch is one of the hardest commercial pivots in modern gaming. The new leadership team has to deliver content updates fast enough to retain early adopters while broadening the appeal beyond the genre's core audience.
How does this round compare to other 2026 game industry layoffs?
The 292 figure at Bungie is significant in isolation but sits inside a much wider industry contraction. 2024 and 2025 saw cumulative game industry layoffs cross 30,000 roles globally, with cuts at Microsoft, Embracer Group, EA, and Unity. 2026 has continued the trend at a slower but still meaningful pace. The Bungie reduction is one of the largest single studio cuts of the year so far at a Sony first party developer, and it confirms that PlayStation Studios is not insulated from the same cost pressures that have reshaped competitors.
What makes the Bungie story distinct is the strategic narrative attached to the cuts. Microsoft's recent reductions came alongside aggressive AI investment messaging. EA's came alongside a sports portfolio reorganization. Sony's framing for Bungie is essentially that the original acquisition thesis, that Bungie would teach the wider PlayStation portfolio how to run profitable live services, did not deliver on the expected timeline. That admission is unusually candid for a publicly listed parent company, and it will shape how analysts price the rest of Sony's gaming acquisitions for the next several quarters.
The takeaway
The 292 layoffs and Justin Truman's departure mark the end of Bungie as a 1,200 person live service powerhouse and the start of a leaner studio focused on keeping Destiny 2 alive and giving Marathon a fighting chance. Poria Torkan steps into one of the toughest leadership assignments in the industry, and the next 12 months will tell whether Sony's 3.6 billion dollar bet on Bungie can still find a profitable second act.
