Bungie Shakes Up Marathon Leadership As Employees Fear More Layoffs

Bungie's Marathon has undergone leadership changes and the game's direction has taken on a new shape in recent months. This report comes just a few months ahead of the launch of the next Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape.

According to an IGN report, Bungie has started shifting around the developers leading Marathon as it attempts to get the game finished and out the door. This includes replacing game director Chirstopher Barrett, a long-time Bungie game designer, with Joe Ziegler, who left the Valorant team at Riot Games to join Bungie in 2022. Ziegler has confirmed on Twitter that he has been the game director for Marathon for the past nine months.

...Marathon is currently expected to release in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

Sony can't catch a break. 3+ billion dollars. I guess Sony wasn't nurturing enough.😏

The leadership at Bungie is equal to Ubisoft. If i was Sony, after their next D2 expansion, if it doesn't perform, i'd fire all the higher ups. They fucked the Destiny IP for long enough.

It sounds like Sony really wants to cut Bungie loose. Everything I’ve read lately makes it sound like they regret the acquisition. It clearly hasn’t been a good move for Bungie

I don't understand why anyone cares about this game. The trailer showed nothing, the original game doesn't look particularly interesting, and Bungie hasn't done anything special in decades. This just seems like more battered housewife syndrome.

Sounds like things are getting really rough for Bungie these days. Seems like Sony is getting ready to take over things there.

Isn't it a known fac that they acquired them because of their "experience with live service games"? Now that they canned everything, they serve no purpose anymore, not to mention that the D2 community itself isn't happy with Destiny's direction for a while now.

I'm guessing corporate Sony wants to see their ROI and are breathing down the necks of SCE to meet their time tables for revenue generation. I think it's a safe assumption corporate wanted a plan for SCE before allowing for the sizable acquisition and they thus far haven't been hitting their milestones, hence that whole GaaS Hail Mary thing they did will almost all their internal studios. No doubt with new SCE leadership when they took over had to reassess and set new plans and milestones to meet. Seems they just want this game out the door. Sheesh, who knows what kind of conditions the other SCE studios have to operate in going forward.

But, but sales are great, who needs games right?

Pretty much this:

That said, I always thought it was the weirdest acquisition to begin with and Bungie hasn't had a hit game like in years making it worth buying them. Sony thought they could get lucky with the online live service stuff and it blew up in their faces. Of course, the blame goes to Jim Ryan.

It's kind of hard to have a successful multiplayer or live service game without releasing the damn games... just saying.