Bungie CEO spends $2.3m on classic cars while sacking 320 workers | This Week in Videogames 

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Wanna know something more vile? Pete Parsons invited a worker to his home to show him his car collections. 2 days before said employee got laid off. That ain't salt, that's fking hydrochloric acid in the wound man.

Pete Parsons was the executive producer of Halo 2. You know, one of the worst development stories in gaming history. Who let him become CEO?

Pete Parsons: “ok I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that we will be merging with Sony and some of you will lose your jobs. But the good news is I got a new car for my collection, so that’s good. You’re still thinking about the bad news.

Standard CEO behavior: privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

Honestly, there should be rules about this by now, enforcable by law. If management fucks up so bad - for whatever reason - that they "have to" sack this many people from their company, they need to lose their job or personally be financially held accountable in a proportionate manner. You just can't go around fucking up this many people's lives for no reason and just get away with it.

With bungie i am starting to think....maybe they were the problem all along

Crazy that ceos can mismanage a company so bad they have to lay off 40% of the company within a year and still not get fired.

As if the FInal Shape review hadn't been delayed enough...now Ralph has to add a whole new part to the script. This review is gonna be 1.5 hours easy at this point lol.

Executives issuing statements like “in these challenging economic times” my brothers in Christ you’re the challenge. You’re the ones making the economy suck!

"Imagine 40% of your coworkers were just gone" Ralph, my guy, as a Software Engineer this is just another Tuesday for us.

Destiny 2: The Final Employee

That Humble closure is disappointing. I can easily see things hitting indies harder since those games are supposed to be 'cheap' and the publishers won't want to spend on marketing. He mentions several games that were recently released that were well-reviewed, but I have not heard of them until now. It's not as simple as toss a game out there and expect people to buy it.

Remember when Bungie said they were “not that type of company” when their workers asked if executives were going to take pay cuts to save jobs? Because I sure do

I’ll be honest, I don’t think it’s that people have less interest in indie games, it’s that they don’t know about them. I keep up with video game news regularly, and I’ve never heard of 1000x resist. Most indies get no advertising and just drop quietly.

Skill up, as someone works in the industry with SLT's I fully support your anger. Like many corporatized industries, it's a broken system where sociopaths fail upwards and the talent regularly gets shafted.

they laid off the people who worked on the final shape before skill up reviewed it lmao

*A wild Lucy appeared!* Cool cameo 😊

Something similar happened in the company where I currently work. The CEO talked about how everyone would get a raise because we had broken records several times and often worked on Saturdays. When the salary increase was supposed to come, we didn't get it because the CEO bought a large mansion that cost several million dollars lol

People really gotta stop seeing CEOs are normal human beings.

In July 2022, Sony Interactive Entertainment, the parent company of PlayStation, acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion. Two years later, it’s gone?!!!!! Nice job management.

surprising absolutely no one, a handful of volunteers have made a better fallout game than bethesda ever will.

Let’s get the Pete Parsons car Tier list Ralph 😂

The whole Bungie blog post basically admits their poor management as their reasons for these layoffs.

Bungie CEO: Hey, thanks for getting us through the Final Shape. Have a nice life.

Why did Bungie have 1400 people working for them to begin with. I'm sorry if this question might sound insensitive in light of all the lay offs, but 1400 people in a single company, that barely makes any games? (I mean, they've made 2 complete games in the last 10 years, and the last one was in 2017. Granted, they were live service games, so it is a continuous non-stop development process, but still, 1400 employees?) This is kinda crazy. Looks completely unsustainable in my profane view. I don't think making games should require this many people working on them, imagine how much money they have to make to even recoup the development costs of such huge projects with such enormous workforce working on them.

Bungie is entering a whole new world of shit. Thank god the final shape is a perfect jumping out point 😂

I can't believe they got the actual (former) speaker of the house to voice the speaker-of-the-house robot. I can't really deal with Fallout anymore, but I'll be checking that out on YT for sure.

"I am sorry i didn' t realize what kind of losers i employed sooner. I can' t even buy a megayacht yet :(" Alan Parsons

calling Valhalla "V-A eleven hall A" nearly made me spit out my drink

It is baffling how you mess up a company this bad. You have a massive passionate team, a dedicated player base, worldwide renown, and are the pioneers of the industry and still somehow manage to fumble the bag.

I think something that could be a contributing factor to slow game sales, especially in the indi scene, is that there's just too many games. I'm working through my 100+ steam wishlist at a snails pace, with pretty much all the games I bought the last year being at least 2+ years old. There's just no reason to buy anything day one or even within the first year of release when I could easily get double or triple the number of older titles for the same price.

Cannot fathom having multiple incubation projects from a studio who has always been one game on the market for the last decade

I am part of the union at ABK and it really is safety net for when mass layoffs happens. I was hesitant to join at first but seeing the down turn in the gaming industry I am glad I did.

I never understand why every company thinks they need to constantly grow. Just because you had a hit game doesn't mean you suddenly need to scale up and work on 3 games at once. I know its about money but it's just annoying

2 of the most recent Doctor Who actors? Colin Baker, 6th Doctor, 1984-1986. Sylvester McCoy, 7th Doctor, 1987-1989. It's just a nitpick but I couldn't let that one pass without comment

I feel like a major problem that is contributing to the fall off on indies is simply oversaturation. It always looks like my steam page is so full of indie games that it’s overwhelming. The ease of access to games nowadays is a double edged sword. Gamers are simply being more frugal with their time now. And since many indie games rely on word of mouth because they lack an advertising budget, if gamers are not playing your game, they won’t know about it either.

A friend of a friend who was working on Marathon got laid off yesterday as part of this. She now has 2 months to find a new job in video games (good luck with that) before her visa will force her to uproot her life and she’ll need to go back to Canada. Absolutely vile move from Parsons

The SAG-AFTRA strike is actually a massive double edged sword since the AI provision is stating that AI usage is okay as long as the actor consents. This sounds good at first until you realize that any voice actor that does not consent to having their voice used by AI will be at a massive disadvantage when it comes to finding work compared to one that does. It is not a wholesale damnation of AI which is what i suspect most want. I fear that meeting this demand would lead to MORE AI voice acting games as opposed to less.

This was one of your best episodes. I appreciate that you dont shy too much from talking about important but not lighthearted news. I also appreciate the extra length of the video.

Surprise Lucy cameo was the best part of the news tbh 😮‍💨☺️

Unions aren’t a perfect solution but they are something that is in the worker’s tool belt to fight back against the growing wage gap in many industries. CEO’s can be well compensated while the workers are also well compensated, not the craziest concept. UPS already has given other unions a framework to work around and modify to make better. It’ll be good to see the unionization movement continue.

Going for the fuckin throat with that thumbnail, love to see it

I figured the Bungie news is what kept the weekly video from dropping on Wednesday est

I'm so glad we keep on supporting big corporations and CEO's like this by buying their games and microtransactions so they can make so enough money to afford their millionaire lifestyles. What a great time to be a peon.

Destiny 2s pie can't get bigger as long as they don't care about having one of the worst new player onboard experiences out there. Imo nothing is lost if Bungee just dies. It's sad for the devs sure, but i'm also not becoming a fan of exxon mobile just because there are also some nice people working there. The way Bungee acts as a company is just the worst and the only reason they are still out there is becuase they manages to aquire a cult following of addicts who will defend and swallow whatever the company does.

"hows 6v6 feel? same as what people all loved in OW1? fantastic, now charge them for it"

Ok, now tell us the good news! Oh, there arent any...

Over on twitter a couple there was an employee talking about how they went to Parsons with their concerns. He told them there were no concerns as he was literally showing his new car to them... the next days they were let go.

I don't need to pretend that 40% of our staff got laid off. Its happening in the entertainment industry right now.

why did I get hyped when Lucy showed up? like a marvel cameo lmao

Thank you to the Skill Up crew for covering issues affecting those of us working within the video game industry, rather than just game releases.

If Sony now controls Bungie im actually intrigued to see how they run it and if its anything better then how bungie been doing these past years...im glad

What will come first, the final shape review, or wrath getting added to D2 😂😂😂

Very classy to give yourself the means to purchase lots of extravagant vanity shit while firing a large portion of your company's workforce.

Hey SkillUp! Wanted to say 2 things. 1 thank you for the high quality coverage of the Bungie situation. Even with a short turnaround, you covered this story more thoroughly than most of the channels I’ve seen so far (most resting on “expansion good. So if good game not enough to save jobs, what is?” And not exploring the entire business mis management issue). But also 2 (unrelated to Bungie) the comment about a lack of interest in indie publishing following the Humble story and using 1000xresist as a one off example felt by contrast, lackluster reporting. While yes that game is good and a critical darling, its genre is niche and indie or otherwise those narrative led adventure games face a tough sell. Not saying that indies don’t have an uphill battle right now or ever in general, but even leaving social media oddities like Palworld out of the discussion or “triple i” indies like Hades II in their own lane, there are still indies popping off and getting attention in 2024. Manor lords comes to mind, and around the same time Armored Core VI announced 3 mil sales, Ender Lillies announced their own 1.5 mil milestone. All that is to say, be careful of anecdotal evidence and keep up the amazing work you do. Much love and appreciation for the channel

LUCY JAMES CAMEO! Skill Up Cinematic Universe fans eating good this week!

"You Either Die a Hero or Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Villain." - Bungie

I know Shill up loves Destiny, but I can't help but feel a strange sort of peace having never played it. The feeling of "its so over" has to be pretty strong right now

People think the problem is the CEOs of the world, but in actual fact, it is always the Board behind the CEO.

I'n getting more and more worried about the general demand for gaming, particularly among younger players 😮‍💨 They're heavily gravitating towards very sticky multiplayer games - which are often free - and basically ignoring the rest of the market. They aren't buying tons of indie games for example, because they aren't interested in following the industry. Games are often just a form of entertainment to them, and not a broader hobby. Titles like Elden Ring or Hogwarts Legacy break through, but they're the exception. This isn't to "blame" younger players at all, just that their consumption habits are completely different to Millennials & Gen X, who grew up when gaming was accelerating rapidly, and it felt like the industry was making massive leaps every 5 years. There's also a discussion about how subscription services and "free games" effect the value placed on normal 'paid for' games, as well as the insidious, time-harvesting design of social media apps....but that's a whole other bucket of worms 🙃

Fuck corporate greed

Would love to see Datto, Byf, and Cross back on the podcast to talk about this more.

YES, let's say this shit out loud! If you are a CEO who "has come to the difficult choice of leaving some people behind" you should not have a 2 million dollars salary! You are responsible for a lot of people, and you are not in a dire financial situation. You need to choose between the livelihood of people or cars, and there's only one correct choice. Any company that behaves like this has no right to talk about "family" or any other dumb shit. Every year they get more and more revenue and not only the workers don't earn more, they get left behind because someone likes to play with cars. Every time a company earns more than the prior year and the actual workers' salaries don't grow accordingly, money is being stolen from those workers, and I'm tired of pretending this is not the case This shit will not stop until we start holding ceos accountable. People who hurt others economically speaking should be criticized for doing so, even if it's completely legal

Seriously where did the billions for the Bungie employee retention go?

"Imagine 40% of your coworkers are gone in the course of a year" these are depressingly low numbers in the tech world atm.

That title, ob boy the gloves are off

i love video games. my favourite part of them is when devs unionize because they're understandably sick of the higher ups' shit.

Man that Humble announcement is rough. There was consistent quality coming out of there the last couple years.

7 days to Die should have been released 7 years ago. The game was done in alpha 16.4 and they've made the game progressively worse since then

It’s kinda hard to take Sag-Afra seriously when they LITERALLY sold out voice actors after their previous strike/contract negotiations just a couple months ago the ago.

1400 staff, say average 40K a year wage per staff , 420 million staff cost since Destiny 2 released. Sony paid 3.6 billion for them. The worst decision Sony ever made.

Lucy must be the next member of skill up team.

With all these studios shutting down in the news, it’d be nice to hear of new ones starting up or people from these companies going off on their own and need the recognition.

The video game industry busted the bubble. While it is true there's a lot of corporate greed, the truth of the matter is that we don't have enough free time to consume all the video games that come out every week. It is of course disappointing for the employees that end up paying for the mistake of their management.

Bungie was a huge studio for what they realistically did, I'm not surprised they struggled to be profitable

I never thought I'd hear anyone but me say " do you guys remember tomba?"

The guy is kinda becoming the Bobby Kotick of Bungie.

Id like to mention that Marathon has since turned into a hero shooter according to reports. Destiny and extraction shooter players play tested the game and didn’t like it (when it was still an extraction shooter). They then hired someone who worked on Valorant I believe to lead the development of the game

So, attempting to spin out a new IP isn’t something that Bungie should be, or likely is, being punished for. All the free money drying up, selling your company to a bigger company; these are things that cause people to lose jobs. Look at every studio purchased by Embracer, or any one of a dozen other examples in the last year or two. You don’t even need a history major to see how bad these things generally go

That john guy yelling "order!" Was a constant on The Traiters gameshow. He's a good dude

TOMBA! NO WAY!!!! That really brings me back, I only played it on a demo disc on the Playstation 1 as a kid.

As an avid Hunt: Showdown player here, I thank you for the shoutout to the game. You, sir, are appreciated.

All employees should quit and make a new studio called Eigunb but just without Pete Parson. lol

Love the surprise Lucy talking about Thank Goodness You're Here! Loved the demo, can't wait to play that.

These CEOs need to start being fired and blacklisted. It's getting way beyond the pale.

I knew this episode might be delayed because of the Bungie news!

343 should hire these people from bungie to finally make a good halo again. 😂😂

I feel like Path of Exile's new league, Settlers of Kalguur, deserves a mention. It just dropped last Friday and is proving to be both ambitious and popular amongst the player base.

If you check SteamDB, it becomes clear why Bungie is struggling. The last release gave a temporary bump in players but in July the active players have dropped lower than they were before the expansion. I would absolutely blame Parsons for gross mismanagement. Also, I would consider Parsons and other execs like him as EVIL. I define evil as someone benefitting at the expense of others and Pete Parsons falls into this quite easily. He doesn't give a shit about the employees and it shows in everything he is doing. He is easily spending money that could have been invested to keep quality talent.

18:53 - Get ready for tears later this year when they win 😅

$2.7 million worth of cars is not a lot for a ceo

I find it hard to believe when Ralph says that Marathon is “too big to fail.” With only one trailer and one vidoc, that don’t show nearly enough about the game, and with accusations that the official Marathon RU-vid channel did viewbotting on the trailer, the game screams mediocre engagement and interest.

Beginning of the video: Corporations are raking in billions of profit! Later half of the video: Corporations are losing billions of dollars!

The style of date everything just makes me want a Paradise Killer sequel. That game was so good.

bungie’s fall from grace is sad. the same company that made halo and the like is no more.

A lot of these positions were hired in when bungie was still trying to be an independent publisher and their positions are now redundant with sony involved. This was bound to happen sooner or later with your costs outpacing your revenue. So it is managements fault for hiring all these people in the first place and not cutting the fat sooner. The man spending money on cars is a side note, it looks bad but thats his money, the real problem there is the board who approved a salary that made that possible while the company was in the red. They could cut executive salries and save a few jobs, but most of those positions would still be cut as they weren't actively producing any sort of revenue

A videogame industry CEO is a sociopath? That’s unpossible!

I hope Pete Parsons only has nightmares from this point on while asleep, and they are just John Bercow screaming "ORDAHHH!" in his greedy little ear. What a PoS.

I understand how you feel about gacha but mihoyo has the live service system down to a science. Bungie might want to take notes. Events, scheduled updates, tons of support for f2p. All for free. Zenless pulled almost 100mil in one month.