Bungie CEO Pete Parsons is leaving after 23 years. Fellow veteran Justin Truman will take over because the storied Halo studio struggles with flagging curiosity in Future 2, the delayed launch of Marathon, and a painful Sony integration following a sky-high $3.6 billion acquisition back in 2022.
“After more than two decades of helping build this incredible studio, establishing the Bungie Foundation, and growing inspiring communities around our work, I have decided to pass the torch,” Parsons wrote in a weblog publish over on Bungie’s web site. “This journey has been the honor of a lifetime. I am deeply proud of the worlds we’ve built together and the millions of players who call them home – and most of all I am privileged by the opportunity to work alongside the incredible minds at Bungie.”
Parsons joined Bungie again in 2002 and was an government producer on Halo 2. He took over the studio when earlier CEO Harold Ryan left in 2016, the yr earlier than Future 2 shipped. He helped engineer the studio’s exit from a publishing deal with Activision in 2019, and Bungie continued to develop amid near-annual expansions for the hit sci-fi loot shooter.
However issues started to alter after promoting to Sony in 2022. Bungie’s experience in multiplayer video games didn’t cease PlayStation’s reside service technique from rapidly going sideways, and the studio suffered mass layoffs in each 2023 and 2024, with key expertise departing, together with veteran designers Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, after a Future spin-off codenamed Payback was reportedly canceled.
IGN reported that a “soul-crushing” atmosphere amongst some workers in late 2023, amid the primary spherical of cuts, as Bungie’s independence inside Sony started to crumble following the declining fortunes of Future 2. Parsons came under fire throughout the 2024 layoffs after listings for his sports activities automotive assortment indicated tens of millions in purchases following the profitable 2022 sale to Sony, whilst rank-and-file workers got pink slips.
“When I was asked to lead Bungie in 2015, my goal was to grow us into a studio capable of creating and sustaining iconic, generation-spanning entertainment,” Parsons wrote in his goodbye publish. “We’ve been through so much together: we launched a bold new chapter for Destiny, built an enviable, independent live ops organization capable of creating and publishing its own games, and joined the incredible family at Sony Interactive Entertainment.”
Extra lately, Bungie has confronted an uphill battle with Marathon, the extraction shooter revival of considered one of its oldest franchises. The sport was supposed to return out in September but was indefinitely delayed following a middling reception to a closed alpha earlier this yr and a plagiarized artwork scandal that noticed the crew compelled to overtake advertising belongings, together with trailers, to remove elements created by an outside artist.
Truman, a 15-year veteran of Bungie, started working on the studio on the unique Future. He admitted to among the studio’s current fumbles however mentioned it stays dedicated to “create worlds that inspire friendship.” “I’ve also been part of these efforts at Bungie when we’ve maybe not been at our best,” Truman wrote. “When we’ve stumbled and realized through listening to our community that we had missed the mark. I know I’ve personally learned a lot over the years, as have all of us here, from those conversations.”
He added, “We are hard at work right now doing that–both with Marathon and Destiny. We’re currently heads down, but we’ll have more to show you in both of these worlds later this year.”
