Destiny 3 Not in Development as Bungie Faces More Significant Layoffs – What’s Next for the Studio

It’s been a rough few years for Bungie, and it just got rougher. A new Bloomberg report from Jason Schreier — one of the most reliably accurate reporters in the games industry — dropped on May 21 with a double gut-punch: Bungie is planning significant layoffs, and Destiny 3 is not currently in development. This lands right as Destiny 2 prepares to receive its final live-service content update on June 9, 2026, closing out what has been one of the most influential — and turbulent — live-service games ever made. If you’ve been holding out hope for a seamless “Destiny 2 ends, Destiny 3 begins” handoff, that hope is officially on ice.

Bungie Is Preparing “Significant” Layoffs — Scale Unknown

According to Bloomberg’s sources — people familiar with Bungie’s plans who asked not to be named — the studio is planning a significant number of job cuts following the conclusion of Destiny 2 development. The exact scale of the layoffs hasn’t been confirmed yet, and as of writing, neither Sony nor Bungie have made any official announcement. But the word “significant” being attached to this by Bloomberg’s Schreier, who doesn’t throw that term around carelessly, is not encouraging.

The core problem is straightforward and brutal: Destiny 2 is ending, and the team that built and maintained it for years doesn’t have a new project to move to. Bloomberg specifically stated that the studio “doesn’t have a new project lined up for Destiny 2’s development team” once the June 9 update goes live. Some developers have already been redirected to Marathon, Bungie’s extraction shooter, and more are expected to follow. But Marathon alone can’t absorb an entire Destiny 2-sized development team, especially given the game’s rocky commercial performance since its March 2026 launch.

This is not the first time Bungie has been through this. In 2024, the studio laid off 220 employees — about 17% of its workforce — while another 155 staff were moved into roles within Sony Interactive Entertainment. At the time, CEO Pete Parsons cited rising development costs, economic pressure, and the studio taking on too much simultaneously. It’s starting to feel like a pattern rather than an exception.

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Destiny 3 Is Not Bungie’s Next Game

Let’s address what’s going to sting the most for the community. When Destiny 2 originally wrapped up its main Light and Darkness saga with The Final Shape back in 2024, a lot of fans assumed the studio would start steering toward Destiny 3. That hasn’t happened. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Bungie does not plan to immediately move into production on Destiny 3.

Staff are reportedly pitching and prototyping ideas — including projects set within the Destiny universe — but none of those projects have been greenlit. Nothing has been approved for full production. There’s no green light, no confirmed team, no timeline. As Bloomberg put it directly: the pipeline outside of Marathon is essentially empty.

Jason Schreier added some important context on Bluesky after the report dropped: “A lot of people have wondered why Bungie didn’t immediately start working on Destiny 3 after The Final Shape two years ago. The answer (as it usually is) is how much money it would take.” That’s the crux of it. Destiny 3 at the scale fans would expect would be an enormously expensive project to greenlight, and right now Bungie and Sony are not in a position where that kind of spend is easy to justify.

What Destiny 2’s Final Update Actually Means

On May 21, Bungie officially announced that Monument of Triumph — arriving June 9, 2026 — will be the game’s final live-service content update. In Bungie’s own words, it’s “a sendoff for Destiny 2 and a starting point for what comes next,” with the studio describing itself as working to “incubate our next games.” The update will be free for all players and is specifically designed to make the game more welcoming for returning guardians who want to experience the end of the journey.

After Monument of Triumph, Bungie’s weekly blog posts will go into what they called “hibernation,” though the studio says it will continue communicating through social media. The game itself will remain playable — in the same way the original Destiny stayed online after its own active support ended — so the servers aren’t going dark. But active development is done. No more seasons, no more expansions, no more raids. The Destiny 2 era, which spanned nearly nine years from the game’s September 2017 launch, is officially closing.

Marathon Is Bungie’s Entire Near-Term Future — And That’s a Problem

With Destiny 3 off the table for now, Marathon is carrying all the weight. Bungie’s extraction shooter launched in March 2026 and has not met the sales expectations Sony and Bungie set for it. The game has received mixed feedback — reviewers generally called it well-made from a mechanical standpoint — but it entered an extremely competitive market going up against established extraction shooters, and it hasn’t found the audience its developers were hoping for.

Bungie is apparently still betting on Marathon’s long-term potential. Season 2, beginning June 2, brings new PvE content, an improved onboarding experience for newcomers, and several changes aimed at broadening the game’s appeal. In what looks like a direct response to Arc Raiders’ audience, Bungie is adding a more casual PvE mode to try to pull in players who found the extraction format too intimidating. Whether that’s enough to turn Marathon’s trajectory around is a genuinely open question.

The problem is the timing. Bungie is doubling down on a game that already missed expectations, while simultaneously losing the studio’s long-running anchor title and facing layoffs that will reduce the headcount available to work on either. That’s not a comfortable position to be operating from.

The Sony Acquisition: Four Years On and Still Not Paying Off

Sony acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion in 2022, making it one of the largest gaming acquisitions of that era. The idea was to add a proven live-service studio to PlayStation’s portfolio as Sony was trying to build out that side of its business. Four years later, the returns have not matched the investment.

Sony recently reported a $765 million impairment loss connected to Bungie assets, driven primarily by the underperformance of Destiny 2’s later content and Marathon’s commercial struggles. An impairment of that size is essentially Sony writing down the value of what it paid for — acknowledging that Bungie is worth less today than the $3.6 billion Sony put on the table. It’s one of the most publicly visible signs that the acquisition has not gone as planned.

Bloomberg also noted that Bungie’s operating costs remain relatively high compared to most studios, partly due to its Bellevue, Washington location and the cost of retaining long-term technical staff in the Seattle area. That cost structure made sense when Destiny 2 was generating consistent revenue. It’s a much harder number to justify when the flagship game is wrapping up and the replacement isn’t performing.

This also fits into a broader pattern of Sony tightening its belt across its gaming division — the same company that just quietly raised PS Plus prices across all three tiers and has been facing scrutiny over its PlayStation Store dynamic pricing practices. Sony is clearly in a phase of cutting costs and pushing for better margins wherever it can find them.

What Bungie’s Future Actually Looks Like Right Now

Stripping away the corporate language, here is where Bungie actually stands heading into summer 2026:

• Destiny 2 is effectively done as an actively supported game after June 9. It stays online but gets no new content.
• Destiny 3 is not in production and has not been greenlit. Ideas are being pitched and prototyped, but nothing is moving forward yet.
• Marathon missed sales expectations and is Bungie’s only active major project right now. Season 2 launches June 2 in an attempt to course-correct.
• Significant layoffs are coming, the scale of which is not yet known. The Destiny 2 team does not have a home.
• Sony is sitting on a $765 million impairment loss from the acquisition and is not in a mood for big spending.

None of that reads as a stable foundation. The best-case scenario is that Marathon finds its footing over the next year, some Destiny pitches get greenlit, and the studio stabilises around a smaller but sustainable headcount. The worst-case scenario is that Marathon continues to underperform, the layoffs significantly hollow out the studio’s institutional knowledge, and Bungie effectively ceases to exist as the studio fans grew up with.

The Destiny community, which has poured hundreds of hours into that universe since 2014, deserves better clarity than this. Right now, the only honest answer to “what comes next for Bungie?” is that nobody — including Bungie — fully knows yet.

The Bottom Line

Bungie is heading into one of the most uncertain stretches in its history. Destiny 2 ends active support on June 9, 2026. Destiny 3 is not in development and nothing in the Destiny pipeline has been greenlit. Significant layoffs are coming for a team without a follow-up project. Marathon is the studio’s only bet, and it hasn’t delivered the numbers Sony needed. For a studio that was once one of the most admired in the industry, and that created one of the most beloved shooter franchises ever made, this is a genuinely painful moment. Whatever comes next — if anything comes next — the Bungie that built Destiny as we knew it is already a different place than it was. Keep an eye on the GTA 6 November 2026 launch and the broader state of the gaming industry this year — it’s shaping up to be a pivotal one on multiple fronts, and not always for the right reasons.