Bungie’s latest round of layoffs was always going to hurt. What is becoming clearer now is that the damage did not stop at Destiny. The team currently building Marathon has been caught in the same wave, and we are not just talking about junior positions. Senior roles tied directly to Marathon have been affected, which raises some uncomfortable questions about where Bungie’s big new shooter goes from here.
Marathon’s Senior Roles Caught in the Layoffs
When the cuts were first announced, Sony framed it as mostly a Destiny story. PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst told staff the layoffs affected most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members, along with SIE teams that support Bungie’s operations.
According to the paperwork, the cuts hit at least 292 employees at Bungie’s Bellevue facility, with a separation date of July 9. Buried in that list are several roles connected to Marathon, including senior leadership. The affected Marathon roles include a General Manager, an Engineering Director, producers, and creative leads. Some of those roles are listed under the codenames Goliath and Run, which were tied to Marathon’s internal team structure during development.
Here is the catch. The filing only flags roles that specifically include Marathon, Goliath, or Run in the title, so it is very likely that other Marathon developers using broader titles like Designer, Engineer, Artist, or Producer were also affected but are harder to identify. In other words, the real impact on the Marathon team could be larger than the named roles suggest.
A Studio in the Middle of a Massive Shakeup
As of writing, Bungie is going through one of the roughest stretches in its history right now. The layoffs come after Destiny 2 wrapped its final live service content update earlier this month, with the studio admitting the game fell short of expectations and that it could no longer keep operating at its previous size.
The leadership picture is shifting, too. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported that studio head Justin Truman is stepping down less than a year after taking over from former CEO Pete Parsons. And the filing reportedly includes a Chief Vision Officer role, a title that has publicly belonged to Bungie co-founder Jason Jones, one of the most important creative figures in the studio’s entire history. If that does point to Jones, it tells you just how deep this restructuring goes.
For context on the scale here, recent estimates put Bungie’s headcount at around 800 before these cuts, down from a peak of roughly 1,300 a few years ago, which would leave the studio at around 500 or fewer staff. That is roughly a third of what it was when Sony bought the studio for 3.6 billion dollars.
The Future of Marathon Seems Bleak
Losing senior leadership in the middle of a live service shooter’s lifecycle is never a good sign. A General Manager and an Engineering Director are not easily replaceable positions. These are the people who set direction, manage scope, and keep a complex online game running and evolving. When those roles get cut, the remaining team often has to absorb the workload while figuring out a new chain of command, and that can slow everything down at exactly the moment a game like Marathon needs momentum.
It is worth remembering that Marathon has already had a bumpy road with players, facing plenty of online skepticism since its reveal. A live service extraction shooter lives or dies on consistent content, fast iteration, and trust that the studio is fully behind it. Trimming senior staff does not automatically kill any of that, but it does make the path forward harder and gives an already cautious community more reason to wonder if Bungie has the firepower to deliver.
Having said all that, the recent roadmap that Bungie revealed, which talked about new roguelite modes and other QoL improvements, it seems like they are betting everything on Marathon being their north star. And from what we know about the development of a possible Destiny 3, going forward, Marathon is going to be Bungie’s lifeline.
Sony Says Marathon Is Still a Core Part of PlayStation
Here is the part that should give fans a bit of breathing room. Despite the cuts, Sony has gone out of its way to publicly back the project.
Hulst said Marathon remains an important part of the portfolio and that Sony will continue to support the team as they build on the foundation established in Season 1 and 2, while also working on incubation efforts for future projects. He added that the company is encouraged by the creativity and opportunities ahead, even if it is too early to talk specifics.
Sony did not have to single Marathon out, and the fact that it did suggests the game is not being quietly shelved. The smaller, restructured team is clearly expected to keep the lights on and keep building. The open question is whether a leaner Marathon group, missing some of its senior voices, can deliver the kind of sustained live service experience the genre demands.
Bungie’s layoffs hitting Marathon’s senior ranks are a genuinely worrying development for a game that already had a lot to prove. Losing a General Manager, an Engineering Director, and other leadership during a live service run creates real risk around pace, direction, and morale.
At the same time, Sony’s public commitment to Marathon as a core part of PlayStation’s portfolio is the strongest reason to think the game still has a future. The next few months, and how the remaining team handles this transition, will tell us whether that support translates into a Marathon that can actually find its footing.
