Earlier this week Pete Parsons, chief executive officer at Bungie published a blog post to the studio’s official website that announced it would be laying off 220 employees.
The mass layoff impacted developers at every level, according to Parsons’ statement, and according to Jeff Grubb on his Games Mess Decides show, it seems that two of those higher-level staff were veteran Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy.
Smith and Noseworthy weren’t exactly laid off, Grubb clarified, but they were part of the restructuring that went with the layoff. Reportedly the project they were leading up, codenamed Payback, was cancelled.
With their project gone the two veterans known for their work on the Destiny franchise seemingly left the studio, rather than being laid off.
Smith for his part joined Bungie all the way back in 2007 after beginning his career as a games journalist. At Bungie he was key to crafting the narrative of Destiny, and rose to being the executive creative director on the franchise.
Noseworthy on the other hand was vice president at Bungie overseeing the business strategy for Destiny as an intellectual property.
Source – [Games Mess Decides via VGC]