Sony to spend over $1 billion on keeping Bungie employees at studio over next several years

With the Bungie acquisition announced earlier this week, Sony has revealed how exactly the $3.6 billion spent on the buy-out will be allocated. It turns out that around $1.2 billion will go to keeping Bungie employees on board.

This information was shared in Sony’s financial report for Q3 2021 (ended December 31, 2021) and later spotted by TweakTown.

Bungie is a private company, so Sony wants to make sure that its shareholders and creative talent will continue to work at the studio after the acquisition. After all, PlayStation acquired the Destiny developer to gain its expertise in creating live-service games, didn’t it?

That’s why Sony decided to allocate around one-third of the $3.6 billion sum to “deferred payments to employee shareholders, conditional upon their continued employment, and other retention incentives.” Most of this money will be paid during the first two years after the deal is closed.

The company will use the remaining $2.4 billion to directly buy Bungie’s private shares.

Sony acquired Bungie on January 31, promising to provide the studio with creative freedom and independence. In return, PlayStation will use the Destiny developer to make further investments in multiplatform development. On top of that, the company is now planning to release 10 new live-service games by March 2026.