Bungie CEO Pete Parsons is leaving after 23 years. Fellow veteran Justin Truman will take over as the storied Halo studio struggles with flagging interest in Destiny 2, the delayed launch of Marathon, and a painful Sony integration following a sky-high $3.6 billion acquisition back in 2022.
“After more than two decades of helping build this incredible studio, establishing the Bungie Foundation, and growing inspiring communities around our work, I have decided to pass the torch,” Parsons wrote in a blog post over on Bungie’s website. “This journey has been the honor of a lifetime. I am deeply proud of the worlds we’ve built together and the millions of players who call them home – and most of all I am privileged by the opportunity to work alongside the incredible minds at Bungie.”
Parsons joined Bungie back in 2002 and was an executive producer on Halo 2. He took over the studio when previous CEO Harold Ryan left in 2016, the year before Destiny 2 shipped. He helped engineer the studio’s exit from a publishing deal with Activision in 2019, and Bungie continued to grow amid near-annual expansions for the hit sci-fi loot shooter.
But things began to change after selling to Sony in 2022. Bungie’s expertise in multiplayer games didn’t stop PlayStation’s live service strategy from quickly going sideways, and the studio suffered mass layoffs in both 2023 and 2024, with key talent departing, including veteran designers Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, after a Destiny spin-off codenamed Payback was reportedly canceled.
IGN reported that a “soul-crushing” atmosphere among some staff in late 2023, amid the first round of cuts, as Bungie’s independence within Sony began to crumble following the declining fortunes of Destiny 2. Parsons came under fire during the 2024 layoffs after listings for his sports car collection indicated millions in purchases following the lucrative 2022 sale to Sony, even as rank-and-file staff were given pink slips.
“When I was asked to lead Bungie in 2015, my goal was to grow us into a studio capable of creating and sustaining iconic, generation-spanning entertainment,” Parsons wrote in his goodbye post. “We’ve been through so much together: we launched a bold new chapter for Destiny, built an enviable, independent live ops organization capable of creating and publishing its own games, and joined the incredible family at Sony Interactive Entertainment.”
More recently, Bungie has faced an uphill battle with Marathon, the extraction shooter revival of one of its oldest franchises. The game was supposed to come out in September but was indefinitely delayed following a middling reception to a closed alpha earlier this year and a plagiarized art scandal that saw the team forced to overhaul marketing assets, including trailers, to remove elements created by an outside artist.
Truman, a 15-year veteran of Bungie, began working at the studio on the original Destiny. He admitted to some of the studio’s recent fumbles but said it remains committed to “create worlds that inspire friendship.” “I’ve also been part of these efforts at Bungie when we’ve maybe not been at our best,” Truman wrote. “When we’ve stumbled and realized through listening to our community that we had missed the mark. I know I’ve personally learned a lot over the years, as have all of us here, from those conversations.”
He added, “We are hard at work right now doing that–both with Marathon and Destiny. We’re currently heads down, but we’ll have more to show you in both of these worlds later this year.”
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