Sony purchased Bungie, the original studio behind Halo and the maker of Destiny 2, for a whopping $US3.6 billion in 2022. Following the sale, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons purchased over 20 classic cars in online auctions costing millions of dollars, according to his account on the website Bring A Trailer. He continued buying them even after mass layoffs at the studio.
Parsons, who has been an executive at Bungie for over two decades, has faced lots of public criticism over the last year for Bungie’s struggles around the evolution of Destiny 2 and leadership decisions that led 100 staff to be laid off last October. A tweet from the CEO thanking those cut for their contribution to the company was accused of being “tone deaf” at the time.
The long-time boss faced calls to resign again today, even temporarily locking his account on Twitter, after announcing that 220 more employees would be laid off, over 100 others would transition to Sony Interactive Entertainment, and a smaller team would be spun-off into a separate PlayStation Studio in a “deepening integration” that read to some like a final Sony takeover of the once internally independent publisher.
“We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red,” Parsons wrote in a blog post. “After this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change our course and speed, and we did everything we could to avoid today’s outcome. Even with exhaustive efforts undertaken across our leadership and product teams to resolve our financial challenges, these steps were simply not enough. “
But that statement comes just two months after Parsons was seemingly the winning $US91,500 bid for a baby blue 1961 Chevrolet Corvette on the vintage car auction site Bring A Trailer. “Bungie lays off 17% of it’s workforce…unrelated here is a list of cars the CEO has purchased on BAT,” tweeted Valorant player association program manager Taylor “tailored” Broomall. The post linked an account page that appears to belong to Parsons called “bngpparsons.”
The page lists over a dozen classic cars and motorcycles that the Bungie executive seemingly won in auctions between September 2022 and June 2024. A 1967 Jaguar XKE Series I 4.2 Roadster has a winning bid of $US205,000 in December 23, 2022. A 1971 Porsche 911S Coupe has a winning bid of $US201,000 in November 22, 2023, the month after Bungie’s first round of mass layoffs. The winning bids for all auctions listed totals around $US2.4 million. Many of the vehicles show up in a photo album on Flickr called “Avants Parsons garage tour 2024″ which shows the CEO and others examining vintage cars in a commercial-sized garage.
“How exciting!” the bngpparsons account wrote after winning the Chevy in June. “I have wanted a c1 since I was a little kid. My second hot wheel ever (in gold). Going to its forever home.”
It’s unclear if the millions spent on the collection came from the Sony buyout or Parsons’ lifelong work at Bungie, and the amount would have likely been a drop in the bucket compared to the massive cuts being asked of the studio as a whole. But so far there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that senior Bungie leadership has taken salary cuts or pursued other cost-saving measures in solidarity with laid-off staff or those still employed who may struggle to make ends meet. IGN reported last fall that when a Bungie department head was asked if Parsons or others were taking pay cuts amid the studio’s current crisis, they said it’s “not that type of company.”
When Sony originally purchased Bungie, some employees were optimistic. Despite no longer being independent, they told the Washington Post’s Launcher that their equity in the studio would be double-vesting, even if 50 percent of the pay-day would be coming years down the road. They also said they were told the acquisition would result in “absolutely no layoffs” and that nothing “major” in terms of restructuring would happen as a result of the deal. Two years later, Parsons has 20 more cars and over a quarter of the company has been laid off.
Parsons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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