We’ve got another big shake-up in the gaming industry, as longtime Bungie CEO Pete Parsons is stepping down.
Parsons announced the news in a blog post on Thursday, confirming that after 23 years (and serving as CEO since 2015), he is departing the company, which has developed some of the most iconic games in the history of first-person shooters, including the original Halo titles and Destiny.
“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 says.
“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.”
Stepping into the role of studio head is Justin Truman, another longtime veteran at Bungie who has worked as a designer, engineer, and, most recently, as general manager of Destiny 2.
“I am committed to supporting and working alongside every member of the team here as we continue pouring our hearts and souls into these worlds. Worlds that we love, and that we hope have been worth your time and your passion. Because ultimately those worlds only exist, and thrive, with you in them,” says Truman.
“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.”
Bungie still has a long, long road ahead
Under Parsons’ leadership, Bungie grew into a massive company, with Destiny 2 reaching new heights as a live-service game before Sony acquired the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022.
For this acquisition, Sony aimed to draw on Bungie’s live-service experience, allowing the company to operate separately as a multiplatform studio sitting next to PlayStation Studios, not underneath it.
Since then, Bungie has taken a mostly downward turn, with the company laying off hundreds of employees in an effort to maintain its independence under the terms of its acquisition.
The company also canceled a spin-off of Destiny, codenamed Payback, while other Bungie employees working on a new IP were spun out into a small new studio under PlayStation called TeamLFG.
Bungie’s leadership has been widely criticized by former Bungie staff who either left the company or were cut across waves of layoffs.
Destiny 2, while still popular, is also on a noticeable decline, with the game’s main story of Light and Darkness having wrapped up in the 2024 expansion, The Final Shape. Since then, the company has released new content, with the most recent addition, The Edge of Fate, receiving mixed impressions.
Bungie was aiming to launch Marathon — its first-person extraction shooter quasi-reboot of its original Marathon series — in September this year. Following mixed-to-negative feedback from a series of closed tests, as well as a huge scandal involving stolen artwork found in the game, Marathon has been delayed.
The game does not currently have a new release date, but is currently planned to launch at some point before the end of Sony’s financial year, or before March 31, 2026.
In a recent earnings call, Sony openly noted that Bungie’s independence was “getting tighter,” with the parent company more involved in the studio’s operations.
Time will tell just what is next for the storied video game developer, but whatever happens next, it will be with some new leadership at the very top.
Marathon is slated to launch across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.
