[STEAM] Sony Says Bungie Hasn’t Brought in as Much Money as It Thought It Would When It Bought the Developer, as Destiny 2 Falls Off a Cliff

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It’s a tough time for Bungie and

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, with parent company Sony saying the studio has failed to meet its sales and user engagement expectations.

In its latest financial report, Sony said it had recorded a 31.5 billion yen (approx. $204.2 million) impairment charge as a result of Destiny 2’s underperformance. That was significant enough to drag down profits at Sony’s Game & Network Services Segment, which includes Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Sony chief financial officer (CFO) Lin Tao, expanded on the issues with Bungie in an investor related financial call:

“Regarding Destiny 2, partially due to the changes in the competitive environment, the level of sales and user engagement have not reached the expectations we had at the time of the acquisition of Bungie. While we will continue to make improvements, we downwardly revised the business projection for the time being, and recorded an impairment loss against a portion of the assets at Bungie.” It’s certainly been a tough time for Destiny 2 and Bungie, which is working on the delayed extraction shooter

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for a release in 2026.

In August,

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. He was succeeded by Justin Truman, previously chief development officer and fellow Bungie veteran. Parsons oversaw Bungie during many turbulent years, first taking over as CEO in 2016 from Harold Ryan and overseeing its break from Activision in 2019. He was at the helm throughout many of the events catalogued in our

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. Just months after our report, Bungie

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, ending the studio's flirtation with independence.

Sony, clearly, saw something in Bungie and its upcoming slate. But as the acquisition settled in, concerns began to arise about the studio's future. Destiny 2 was struggling, and Marathon was still years away. Then the layoffs came. In 2023,

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and delayed Destiny 2's The Final Shape DLC, with Parsons taking responsibility for the cuts. Developers told IGN at the time that the

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as fears grew of a total Sony takeover of the company. In 2024, this was followed up with

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, impacting 220 people despite The Final Shape's success. 155 people were also integrated from Bungie into Sony at this time. In the wake of those layoffs,

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. It was apparently bad enough that at least one source described as a "well-connected former worker" went so far as to claim that Bungie faced dire consequences if the acquisition hadn't happened, saying that the "alternate history is insolvency."

Troubles continued to rock the studio through the rest of 2024 and into 2025, with

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to an unknown future date. Most recently, Sony confirmed Bungie would be integrated into PlayStation Studios so the company could have more control over the developer.

Destiny 2 has seen its player count plummet as updates have failed to hit the mark. The action shooter hit a new low on Steam this month, with a peak concurrent player count of 13,497 in the past 24 hours. In June last year it hit 314,000. Recent user reviews for Destiny 2 on Steam are ‘mostly negative,’ although overall reviews are ‘mostly positive.’ Steam does not paint the entire picture when it comes to Destiny 2’s popularity, with it widely available across multiple platforms, but clearly Sony isn’t happy with how the studio has performed in the three years since it brought it into the fold.

Back in June,

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despite high-profile failures such as

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, and insisted Marathon would be out before April 2026 despite the mixed alpha feedback and

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.

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, with one estimate suggesting it

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. It has proved a costly failure for Sony, with hundreds of millions of dollars wasted amid the closure of its developer, Firewalk Studios. Bungie now faces concern over its own future, with the pressure on Marathon to deliver.

Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on

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at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld.

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