New article with more details (from Jason Schreier who first broke the story). If you can't see it, I'll copy the whole text under read more.
About 100 employees were laid off in total (8%) and one of the main reasons listed is "underperformance," "sharp drop in popularity" and "poor reception of Lightfall."
So you know when for the last year and a half content creators have been shitting and pissing on the game as a full-time job and the amount of negativity and ragebait content became the only thing to make content about for them? Well they certainly won't take the blame, but I will let it be known. These people either don't understand the influence they have or they do and they're doing it on purpose, and I don't know which of these two options is worse, but I am 100% confident that their campaign of rage and hate contributed to this.
You don't base your entire community around constantly hating everything about the only game you play (despite clearly not enjoying it anymore) and somehow avoid galvanising thousands and thousands of people into perceiving the game negatively. Imagine being employees who have barely worked there for 2 years and the only community reception they've seen is 24/7 hate train for their work and then they get fired because of "poor reception" and "drop in popularity." How can they not take that personally? I am absolutely devastated for these people who delievered a banger product and who were met with an unrelenting barrage of toxic gamer children which ended up having more sway over their boss than them.
Which brings me to the next bit and that's FUCK THE CEO. He is now my mortal enemy #1. I am projecting psychic blasts directly into his brain. What an absolute spineless coward who is more willing to bow down to fucking gamers than to protect his own employees. This is absolutely rage inducing because this has happened before. From the article from 2021 about the toxic culture at Bungie:
Reading this shit from the new article absolutely fucking sent me into blind rage because I immediately remembered this. Another instance of employees suffering because of comments on reddit. And because of toxic players. And proof that leadership is not protecting employees and is instead siding with players.
Match made in heaven. Asshole gamer content creators and asshole CEOs, all of whom sit at home on piles of money made from someone else's labour. I hope they all explode. None of the people that worked on this game deserve this.
Another article with an infuriating comment from the CEO:
In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2.
"Kept the right people." Really. Veteran composers weren't the right people? Die!
Bloomberg article in full:
Bungie’s decision to cut an estimated 100 jobs from its staff of about 1,200 followed dire management warnings earlier this month of a sharp drop in the popularity of its flagship video game Destiny 2.
Just two weeks ago, executives at the Sony-owned game developer told employees that revenue was running 45% below projections for the year, according to people who attended the meeting.
Chief Executive Officer Pete Parsons pinned the big miss on weak player retention for Destiny 2, which has faced a poor reception since the release of its latest expansion, Lightfall.
The next expansion, The Final Shape, was getting good — not great feedback — and management told those present that they planned to push back the release to June 2024 from February, according the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The additional time would give developers a chance to improve the product.
In the meantime, Parsons told staff Bungie would be cutting costs, such as for travel, as well as implementing salary and hiring freezes, the people said. Everyone would have to work together to weather the storm, he said, leaving employees feeling determined to do whatever was needed to get revenue back up.
But on Monday morning the news got worse: Dozens of staffers woke up to mysterious 15-minute meetings that had been placed on their calendars, which they soon learned were part of a mass layoff. Bungie laid off around 8% of its employees, according to documentation reviewed by Bloomberg. Bungie didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Employees who were let go will receive at least three months of severance and three months of Bungie-paid COBRA health insurance, although other benefits, such as expense reimbursements, ended Monday, sending some staff racing to submit their receipts.
Laid-off staffers will also receive prorated bonuses, although those who were on a vesting schedule following Sony Group Corp.’s acquisition of Bungie in January 2022 will lose any shares that weren’t vested as of next month.
The layoffs are part of a larger money-saving initiative at Sony’s PlayStation unit, which has also cut employees at studios such as Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and its San Mateo office.
TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a report Monday that “events over the last few days lead us to believe that PlayStation is undergoing a restructuring.”
PlayStation president Jim Ryan announced last month that he plans to resign.
Many of the layoffs at Bungie affected the company’s support departments, such as community management and publishing. Remaining Bungie staff were informed that some of those areas will be outsourced moving forward.
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the other thing baru is always doing is like . simultaneously forgetting everyone around her has personal motives of their own AND assuming motive as applied to herself where there isn't any, like 'why would they send me a person who resembles me complexion-wise for this task? are they trying to get on my good side?' like maybe it's just a coincidence. a lot of things are. but because she's so paranoid she's always reading into every little detail assuming it has relevance while at the exact same time missing relevant details because they have to do with things and people that are not her
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my case for why i think coronabeth tridentarius would be god's perfect lyctor:
slutty bisexual
loves drama but wants everyone to get along
not immune to propaganda
not overly religious
canonically loves bad jokes
pleasent and respectful and polite, but also awful
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like i see people say stuff like “rei is a deconstruction of the idea of like the perfect girl in a male gaze-y way” and and i'm ready to agree until they go “it’s because she’s creepy and weird and bad!” like no. rei's a deconstruction of misogynistic ideas of womanhood because they’re ideals forced upon her that damage her, not because she’s in any way “creepy”. like, the fact she’s a fourteen year old girl who was basically used as a substitute wife by her father bc she looked like his own dead wife is not something that is meant to make rei look bad like holy shit.
like both rei and asuka are very obviously like. showing fantasised and misogynistic ideas of an idealised woman don’t work irl yeah. shinji's misogynistic view of them is wrong. but that’s not because rei and asuka are bad people it’s because like. “fourteen year old who's flirty and seductive” and “fourteen year old who's a quiet obedient object” are major signs of abuse and trauma and anyone actually acting in those ways at that age clearly isn’t normal. asuka is desperate for attention in any way she can get it, even unhealthy and dangerous ways. rei is at the very least I has a weird pseudo-incestous enmeshment filled abusive relationship with her father, even if she's not actively being sexually abused. asuka is seeking support, rei is a grooming victim. these are not things that are flaws in their character the entire point of subverting the expectations is to show how those expectations are unhealthy to rei and asuka like. god.
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(mgv) OAUUGHHH lawrence and adam rooming together out of the hospital because it's made VERY CLEAR that they need each other close and safe after the trap. like @lucradiss said, they had to be moved into the same room because even after the smell of blood and shit and fear were cleaned off of them, their distress scent -- raw and unfiltered "NEED, COME BACK, DON'T LEAVE, WHERE ARE YOU, NEED YOU" -- was palpable enough to send their respective floors into a state of unease. and adam's being evicted, and tensions are high between lawrence and alison right now, so....
their new place doesn't scream "doctor's salary" but it's not a shithole either. one floor, too. at first they're in separate rooms but..... lawrence hasn't slept alone in years, and not having adam as close as possible still gives him some unease (if he can't see him how can he be sure he ever came back for him, got him out of there, let him live). he doesn't even get a chance to wheel by adam's room before the man himself is slipping into his. "keep seein' shit in the shadows. think i gotta take the door off my closet."
lawrence grants him half his bed easily. he also learns fairly quickly that adam is a funny sleeper. he burrows and squirms relentlessly in his sleep until he's nearly sideways with his head on lawrence's ribs. one time he woke up to adam sprawled bonelessly across his middle, slightly crushing him but mostly just endearing himself to lawrence.
the point of no return for Feeling Something More for adam was when diana stayed for the weekend. they hit it off well in the hospital already, so he wasn't worried about that. no, it was simply how much adam worried about making her feel safe there, because it might be her dad's place, but her dad has a roommate now and they didn't meet under fantastic circumstances. he doesn't want her to see him like zep, like some stranger in a home that isn't his.
(it is his home, though.)
he's trying so hard for this eight year old who's been through some shit, he wants her to like him, to be okay with him being there, and it chokes lawrence up if he thinks about it too hard. it feels a lot like a binding point between his old life and his new one. he loves them. he loves him.
diana learns what a 'pup pile' is that night. she has no siblings to pile up with, so she never got to learn, which just Isn't Right in adam's eyes. so that night adam stuffs them into their bed with the pillows and blankets from his old room they'll convert to be diana's, says, "three's not much a pile, but we'll work with what we got, right?" and hustles them into something comfortable, twined and piled on each other.
and if lawrence cries a few happy tears that night, well, he's allowed some by now, isn't he?
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WAIT Elle has box braids in s3??? I could cry
I don't think she had bad hair in s1 or s2, but I'm excited that they're actually giving the Black girls Black hairstyles instead of having them wear it out.
Before, it felt like the (all-white, for context) hair department was just ignorant about Black hair, so they put wigs on the Black actresses and only did styles that also work on nonblack hair for their own sake/convenience. This theory was especially supported by the fact that Tara, whose 4c hair couldn't really be styled the same as nonblack hair, wore a twistout that would take literal hours to do every day, but she had box braids in s2! and Elle has box braids now!! I'm so excited!!!
I also feel like this fits her bold, fashion-loving personality so much better than leaving her hair out. Our hair is basically its own accessory, and the long box braids are very feminine. Again, I'm not saying not having a protective style isn't feminine or fashionable (I myself am a fashion girlie with an Afro), but having one is another outlet for her creativity, and I'm glad they're recognizing that now.
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