New article with more details (from Jason Schreier who first broke the story). If you can't see it, I'll copy the whole text under read more.
About 100 employees were laid off in total (8%) and one of the main reasons listed is "underperformance," "sharp drop in popularity" and "poor reception of Lightfall."
So you know when for the last year and a half content creators have been shitting and pissing on the game as a full-time job and the amount of negativity and ragebait content became the only thing to make content about for them? Well they certainly won't take the blame, but I will let it be known. These people either don't understand the influence they have or they do and they're doing it on purpose, and I don't know which of these two options is worse, but I am 100% confident that their campaign of rage and hate contributed to this.
You don't base your entire community around constantly hating everything about the only game you play (despite clearly not enjoying it anymore) and somehow avoid galvanising thousands and thousands of people into perceiving the game negatively. Imagine being employees who have barely worked there for 2 years and the only community reception they've seen is 24/7 hate train for their work and then they get fired because of "poor reception" and "drop in popularity." How can they not take that personally? I am absolutely devastated for these people who delievered a banger product and who were met with an unrelenting barrage of toxic gamer children which ended up having more sway over their boss than them.
Which brings me to the next bit and that's FUCK THE CEO. He is now my mortal enemy #1. I am projecting psychic blasts directly into his brain. What an absolute spineless coward who is more willing to bow down to fucking gamers than to protect his own employees. This is absolutely rage inducing because this has happened before. From the article from 2021 about the toxic culture at Bungie:
Reading this shit from the new article absolutely fucking sent me into blind rage because I immediately remembered this. Another instance of employees suffering because of comments on reddit. And because of toxic players. And proof that leadership is not protecting employees and is instead siding with players.
Match made in heaven. Asshole gamer content creators and asshole CEOs, all of whom sit at home on piles of money made from someone else's labour. I hope they all explode. None of the people that worked on this game deserve this.
Another article with an infuriating comment from the CEO:
In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2.
"Kept the right people." Really. Veteran composers weren't the right people? Die!
Bloomberg article in full:
Bungie’s decision to cut an estimated 100 jobs from its staff of about 1,200 followed dire management warnings earlier this month of a sharp drop in the popularity of its flagship video game Destiny 2.
Just two weeks ago, executives at the Sony-owned game developer told employees that revenue was running 45% below projections for the year, according to people who attended the meeting.
Chief Executive Officer Pete Parsons pinned the big miss on weak player retention for Destiny 2, which has faced a poor reception since the release of its latest expansion, Lightfall.
The next expansion, The Final Shape, was getting good — not great feedback — and management told those present that they planned to push back the release to June 2024 from February, according the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The additional time would give developers a chance to improve the product.
In the meantime, Parsons told staff Bungie would be cutting costs, such as for travel, as well as implementing salary and hiring freezes, the people said. Everyone would have to work together to weather the storm, he said, leaving employees feeling determined to do whatever was needed to get revenue back up.
But on Monday morning the news got worse: Dozens of staffers woke up to mysterious 15-minute meetings that had been placed on their calendars, which they soon learned were part of a mass layoff. Bungie laid off around 8% of its employees, according to documentation reviewed by Bloomberg. Bungie didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Employees who were let go will receive at least three months of severance and three months of Bungie-paid COBRA health insurance, although other benefits, such as expense reimbursements, ended Monday, sending some staff racing to submit their receipts.
Laid-off staffers will also receive prorated bonuses, although those who were on a vesting schedule following Sony Group Corp.’s acquisition of Bungie in January 2022 will lose any shares that weren’t vested as of next month.
The layoffs are part of a larger money-saving initiative at Sony’s PlayStation unit, which has also cut employees at studios such as Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and its San Mateo office.
TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a report Monday that “events over the last few days lead us to believe that PlayStation is undergoing a restructuring.”
PlayStation president Jim Ryan announced last month that he plans to resign.
Many of the layoffs at Bungie affected the company’s support departments, such as community management and publishing. Remaining Bungie staff were informed that some of those areas will be outsourced moving forward.
180 notes
·
View notes
Thinking about...
How Morgan never bothered to teach Pearl how to read, but expected her to understand written instructions using complicated language.
How Morgan saw Pearl as nothing more than a tool to give her power in Kurain.
It was never about Pearl. The purpose of Pearl's very existence was for Morgan's own gain.
Pearl still manages to love and trust her mother deeply despite everything. Even when visiting Morgan in prison, Pearl has a sense of duty to obey her mother's instructions without even fully understanding.
If Pearl was born without spiritual power, she would have likely been discarded, considered useless, because Morgan would not have seen her as her ticket to high standing in her family, village, and culture.
Morgan saw Maya as an obstacle, not a person Pearl looked up to highly and loved dearly. She couldn't even spare a moment to think about how Pearl would be affected by losing her cousin.
Because nothing was ever about Pearl, it was only ever about Morgan getting what she wanted.
189 notes
·
View notes
God q!BBH is fascinating. His paranoia especially. q!Bad has called himself paranoid in character btw. multiple times. but the one example that immediately comes to mind is when he was talking to q!Aypierre. When people call him paranoid he doesn’t really say “Nuh uh” (at least not seriously - he’s become a little more self-aware) he says “okay maybe I am, maybe I’m not. but don’t you understand why?”
for q!BBH the price of potentially overreacting and hurting his friends’ feelings with his lack of trust is significantly outweighed by the price of an egg fucking dying because he decided to relax. He has been the deciding factor in a life-or-death situation for an egg multiple times. And his overreactions have saved lives. Obviously his developing belief that he’s like the Lone Responsible Caretaker of the Eggs is like blatantly incorrect but it didn’t come into existence in a void. It isn’t just one of his inventions it’s a consequence of other parents putting (whether purposely or accidentally) a lot of pressure on him that he tried and failed to escape from.
So he doesn’t care if he’s paranoid, he doesn’t care if his distrust hurts people, he doesn’t care about what’s reasonable or not - he cares about the eggs being alive. And if being unreasonable has kept the eggs alive in the past then damn you better believe he’s only going to get more unreasonable. And he’s not going to be sorry about it either, not while he feels responsible for every single child on the island.
109 notes
·
View notes
It’s been three weeks and I still have not sorted my feelings about Legends Con. So have this random, unorganized list of things that happened that I still remember (more under the cut):
Nick tried to flash (stood on a chair and pulled up his shirt) Tala and Maisie during their panel but no one noticed him in the back
On the other hand when Arthur showed up during Caity and Jes’ panel they immediately saw him and greeted him
Caity was asked what Sara’s safe word is at the Meet&Greet and her answer was “Chiquita Banana”
When asked who they would eat first on a deserted island, pretty much everyone immediately said “Dom”
Caity and Jes kept talking about doing a podcast and asking people for stuff to talk about. Jes suggested they should just do Stabcast but Caity said she doesn’t like True Crime (which fair, I don’t either lol)
Adam said Avalance’s kid is named Rose and that Gary would be a great babysitter but he definitely would lose her at some point
At the opening ceremony Caity was like “I think the last time I said I was getting married. And I did it. *shows her ring* And Jes had our baby!”
When talking about the hardest goodbyes, Caity being Caity forgot Dom left and wasn’t even in the final season. Her answer was Franz btw.
A kid asked Amy, Caity and Jes if they would rather jump in lava or drown in water if they had to die and Jes was like “How old are you? Where is your mother?!” lmao
Jes recited the condolence card from Meet The Legends to the best of her recollection and kept laughing
Arthur kept mentioning how weird it is that all these fans and the cast are in his hometown
I could listen to Maisie talk for hours, just wanted to throw that in here
Jes was talking about how beautiful the gold dress from 502 was and Caity replied with “Anything you wear is beautiful 🥰” before Amy chimed in that she is still looking for the video of Liv and Jes laughing at Matt falling off his chair that was mentioned earlier lol
When asked about a crack ship (Rishop = Rip/Bishop) Arthur went on to talk about how he loves fanfiction lol
When asked if Nick or Matt is the better kisser Tala said “Maisie”
Adam started singing I Will Always Love You (forgot why) and Maisie left him hanging by not joining in and just smiling/laughing
Poor Matt didn’t know about the Human Centipede but now he does
Jes came up with the pick up line “I can be your legend until tomorrow” and then was like “someone try this tonight at the bar!”
On the second day Adam brought a water pistol to the panel and used it on everyone who got up to ask a question
Adam was THE hype man all weekend. He kept starting “When I say DC you say Legends of Tomorrow” chants
The fandom organized a group gift to give each cast member a trophy of the Waverider. We were allowed to present it to them at the closing ceremony.
Nick was called “Brad Pitt” during the trophy ceremony and Adam being Adam stood up instead
Amy sang Future Favorite with one of the kids at the closing ceremony
Adam said something about how he doesn’t like being emotional in front of people and everyone started chanting “SHOW EMOTIONS”
By the end of the closing ceremony everyone was super emotional. Caity was too emotional to speak when it was her turn and started crying and Jes hugged her. She said “I miss you guys” to the cast and went back for another hug. Jes was like “stop the emotions. stop the emotions” in reference to the earlier chant
A small list of some of the things that happened to me personally. I won’t share it all in detail here though, for reasons:
When I got my solo photo op with Caity, she saw my Real Housewives Sara shirt and was like “That’s funny. Can I take a picture?” and then she posted it on her IG Story
Amy spoke German to me out of nowhere when she noticed my accent. She also called me back during our photo op to ask me how I was and if I slept alright.
Jes gave me this 🥺 look when I talked to her at the autograph table
Nick held my hand for like a minute which was super overwhelming especially cause I struggle with eye contact lol. He also kept lovingly teasing me the whole weekend.
Me and a bunch of people did the 709 costumes as cosplay and won ‘Best Group’. It was a lot of fun.
81 notes
·
View notes