Has Destiny 2’s Bungie Actually Expanded To 1,400 Employees?

Everyone, including some Bungie employees, are confused about some recent listings that indicate the Destiny 2 developer has expended to 1,400 employees, just a short while after laying off a significant number of workers.

While the number may be technically correct, there appear to be a lot of caveats here based on what I’ve heard about the situation. Update: Bungie has now given me some updates but there is a bit of confusion around some of these figures,

• Bungie tells me they have about 1350 employees right now, which does not include contractors or Sony employees.
• Sony employees and contractors are indeed helping out, but outside help is not a new strategy for Bungie as they’ve done that in the past.
• Bungie delisted many roles after the layoffs and there has not been a mass replacement of employees or re-hiring.
• There remains some confusion about the number of employees when layoffs started and ended, as I’m having trouble getting the exact figures for those.

Players are hoping the PlayStation help is reminiscent of when Bungie had support studios from Activision helping out with Destiny 2 content back in the Forsaken/Black Armor/Drifter/Opulence era of the game, which many players have fond memories of because of the breadth of what was produced. Now, with talk that Bungie really, really wants The Final Shape to be the best expansion they’ve ever done, they might have had Sony pull in support for them to help make this happen.

Still, 1,400 employees working on Destiny 2 and potentially other Bungie projects is quite large. While it would be nice if this sort of bonus support would produce another massive expansion like Forsaken, I do wonder how much of this is contractors replacing jobs that Bungie employees were just fired from.

We do not know all the details, but no, it does not appear that a few months after laying off 100 people, Bungie has suddenly hired 400 more, and this appears to be a combination of a few things happening here.

As for the end result, we’ll see what this apparent surge in the workforce, in whatever form it has taken, does for The Final Shape. Another internal thing I’ve heard is that…The Final Shape is very good, but what specifically that means remains to be seen. I hope we can get something Forsaken-level, and this may be how that happens. We’ll see.

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