Things continue to look bleak for Bungie as Sony says it’s recorded a sizable loss thanks to disappointing sales and player engagement from Destiny 2.
The writing’s been on the wall for ages now that Sony’s buyout of Destiny 2 developer Bungie back in 2022 hasn’t been as lucrative as either company might have hoped.
Since then, Destiny 2 found itself making headlines for frequently underperforming, hundreds of Bungie employees were let go from the studio, and it was even suggested that Sony paid far too much money for what Bungie was really worth.
Now, Sony has bluntly admitted that Destiny 2 is doing so poorly that the company is writing off some of the $3.6 billion (about £2.7 billion) it spent buying Bungie as a loss.
This comes via an earnings call with investors where Sony discussed the results of its most recent financial quarter. According to This Week In Videogames, Sony’s chief financial officer Lin Tao said Destiny 2’s ‘level of sales and user engagement have not reached the expectations we had at the time of the acquisition of Bungie.’
Tao pinned this on ‘changes in the competitive environment’ and though she added that an effort will be made to improve things, ‘we downwardly revised the business projection for the time being and recorded an impairment loss against a portion of the assets at Bungie.’
Per the earnings report, that impairment loss is worth 31.5 billion yen, which is tantamount to about £155 million. What this means is that Bungie needs to work harder than ever to please the higher-ups, which is no easy feat.
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Bungie is currently focused on its Marathon extraction shooter, which is another live service game and a reboot of its original sci-fi franchise before it made Halo.
Said reboot is unfortunately already off to a bad start, with its multiplayer playtests attracting such widespread criticism that Sony delayed it out of 2025. It’s now slated to launch before the end of March 2026.
As a reminder, Sony didn’t just buy Bungie for Destiny 2, but also for its expertise in live service games, which were a major priority for Sony at the time. Considering Sony has since reportedly cancelled multiple live service games, it seems those plans have not been working out.
That said, Tao took a moment to praise Helldivers 2 (the one successful live service game Sony has published), highlighting its Xbox port from earlier this year.
‘Helldivers 2… is doing extremely well, not only attracting new users on Xbox, but also seeing increased engagement from existing users on PS5 and PC. This resulted in a significant increase in sales of the title year on year,’ said Tao.
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