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Sony’s decision to spend $3.6 billion on acquiring Bungie really hasn’t gone well. At the time, Bungie was a good example of the live-service model of games, and Sony’s acquisition was in the name of bolstering its own live-service objectives. The studio has been plagued by problems since, and probably was already facing issues before the purchase.
“Regarding Destiny 2, partially due to the changes in the competitive environment, the level of sales and user engagement have not reached the expectations we had at the time of the acquisition of Bungie,” said Lin Tao, the CFO and Corporate Executive Officer at Sony. “While we will continue to make improvements, we downwardly revised the business projection for the time being, and recorded an impairment loss against a portion of the assets at Bungie.”
An impairment loss is essentially a way of saying that Bungie is now considered to be worth less than the $3.6 billion Sony paid for it. When a company buys another, it lists that purchase as an asset on its books. If that asset’s value drops — for example, because the studio isn’t performing as well as expected — accounting rules require Sony to mark down its value and record that as a loss. In this instance, Sony has recorded a $204 million lost against Bungie.
Since being bought, Bungie’s flagship game Destiny 2 has failed to meet player and sales expectations, it’s next upcoming game Marathon has met a mixed reception and been caught up in a plagiarism scandal, and the company has been hit with layoffs. Morale has been described as being in “free fall”. Marathon is currently delayed indefinitely, although Sony has declared it will be released by the end of their financial year in March. Mind you, the overall vibe is that it won’t make that date, with some people even fearing it could be cancelled entirely.
Meanwhile, Sony’s live service aspirations have struggled to come to fruition. Helldivers 2 has been the only success so far. Concord crashed in spectacular fashion, and Sony has cancelled most of its other live-service projects.
In response to Bungie’s continued problems, Sony has taken more and more control of the studio, which was once promised independence.
