PlayStation World Wide Studios head Herman Hulst has been appointed to lead Bungie, based on the latest report.
Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb, who is known for his industry insight, took to Twitter/X to address the matter of Bungie’s independence from Sony. A Twitter/X user had asked whether the Destiny developer is still publishing its games independently and operating separately from PlayStation studios, and what “deepening integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment” actually meant.
Grubb responded by stating that Hermen Hulst runs Bungie now. He also mentioned that Also, the company attempted to soften the blow by sending many people from Bungie into Sony Interactive Entertainment instead of just laying them off. He had originally believed that the number of jobs lost was going to be closer to 350.
As far as Grubb knows, which he admitted isn’t everything by a long shot, Bungie will lose its autonomy and will become like any other PlayStation Worldwide Studio under Sony Interactive Entertainment and Herman Hulst in due time. By that, he meant that this is a process that is just starting now.
PlayStation closed the agreement to acquire Bungie back in July, 2022, when the console maker officially welcomed the studio to the PlayStation family. Earlier in January 2022, the company had announced that it had commenced an agreement to acquire Bungie. Based on the agreement between PlayStation and Bungie, the latter would lend its expertise in multiplatform development and live game services to Sony in order to help it in delivering on its vision of expanding PlayStation in the live service domain. Bungie is a great innovator and has developed key proprietary tools that will help PlayStation Studios achieve this goal. At the time, Sony had made it clear that clear to the community that Bungie would remain an independent and multi-platform studio and publisher.
