Skip to main content

Crunch at Bungie contributed to Halo co-creator’s departure

Halo: Reach Multiplayer
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Halo and Destiny developer Bungie is one of the most acclaimed shooter studios in the game industry, but the company also has a reputation for “crunch” on its projects. For Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto, this culture was a factor in his decision to ultimately leave the studio.

Recommended Videos

Speaking in a roundtable interview with GameSpot, Lehto explained that Bungie’s crunch periods could last for several months, and this burnout played a role in his decision to ultimately leave the studio. He subsequently founded V1, which is working on the original shooter game Disintegration at the moment. The studio limits extended working hours to around one week at a time in order to mitigate mental and physical stress.

“We don’t want to experience [crunch]. We don’t want to replicate that at all again,” Lehto added in the interview. “So at V1, one of our primary goals with the studio is making sure that we create an atmosphere where everybody is intimately involved with what we’re working on, so there is a lot of responsibility on everybody’s shoulders. And everybody wears several hats.”

Disintegration - Technical Beta Trailer | PS4

Digital Trends has reached out to Bungie for comment on its current studio culture, and if crunch has been reduced more recently.

Lehto was involved at Bungie up through the first Destiny game’s early development. As recently as last June, Bungie announced it was delaying a patch in Destiny 2 in order to help preserve a work-life balance for its development staff. The expansion Destiny 2: Shadowkeep also experienced a slight delay before its launch on October 1, 2019.

Within the last week, developer CD Projekt Red has also come under fire for its plan to crunch while finishing Cyberpunk 2077. The decision was revealed by CEO Adam Kiciński less than a year after the studio claimed it would never crunch on the game. Other high-profile studios who have been accused of crunch include NetherRealm, the now-defunct Telltale Games, Rockstar Games, Epic Games, and Treyarch. Treyarch, which is owned by former Bungie partner Activision, reportedly had contracted quality assurance testers working 70 hours per week in the year leading up to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s release.

Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
Destiny 2 studio Bungie hit by layoffs, internal game delays
A runner runs in Marathon.

Amid a wave of layoffs at Destiny developer and Sony subsidiary Bungie this week, Destiny 2: The Final Shape and Marathon have both reportedly been delayed.
On Monday morning, tweets from developers revealed that Bungie, which was acquired by Sony in January 2022, was suffering layoffs. This was followed up by a report from Bloomberg that went into more detail about the layoffs and their impact on Bungie's future games. Sony and Bungie have not officially commented on the delays yet, although the Bloomberg article mentions that Bungie CEO Pete Parsons will hold a team meeting later today to discuss the layoffs further. This all follows contractor layoffs at Sony studio Naughty Dog earlier this month, which happened as that studio struggles to develop and release a The Last of Us multiplayer game. 

Bloomberg suggests that these layoffs, like others at Sony this year, are tied to internal game delays. While Destiny 2: The Final Shape is publicly slated to come out in February 2024, Bungie reportedly told staff that it's now going to come out in June 2024. Meanwhile, we learned that Bungie's revival of Marathon was apparently targeting a 2024 launch -- although no release window was given officially -- but will now come out sometime in 2025. These delays make the PlayStation 5's 2024 game lineup look pretty sparse right now outside of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and it suggests that Destiny 2's next season will be one of its longest.
As of now, Sony and Bungie have not publicly commented on the layoffs or delays, but we will update this post when they do say more about it.

Read more
What is Marathon? Bungie’s mysterious Destiny 2 follow-up, explained
A runner runs in Marathon.

This week's PlayStation Showcase featured a lot of surprises, from Square Enix's Foamstars to a full Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake. The biggest shocker, though, came when Bungie's logo flashed on the screen. The developer has been solely focused on the Destiny series for the last decade, so any new announcement would be significant news. For a moment, the sci-fi trailer looked like a teaser for Destiny 3. The truth would be far more surprising when we saw the game's title: Marathon.

Marathon - Announce Trailer | PS5 & PC Games

Read more
Halo Infinite Season 3 delayed until 2023, split-screen co-op canceled
halo infinite season delay team

After releasing in an unfinished state, Halo Infinite is still dealing with long-term woes that should come as no surprise to anyone who's been following the game. Today in a new Halo Waypoint blog, 343 announced that the upcoming Season 3 update to the game is delayed. Along with this news, the split-screen co-op, a staple of the Halo series, is completely canceled.

Halo Infinite | Update – September 2022

Read more