Sony offers £880million retention scheme for Bungie employees

Sony released an earnings report that included details of its recent acquisition of Bungie that revealed employee retention plans.

Sony revealed plans to purchase Destiny 2 creator Bungie for £2.6 billion earlier this week, and now an earning report says that a third of the money will be used for “deferred payments to employee shareholders, conditional upon their continued employment, and other retention incentives” (via TweakTown).

The deferred payments are planned across multiple years once the acquisition is complete and aim to keep Bungie’s current staff at the company. Sony is prepared to use £582 million in deferred payments in the first two years after the deal completes.

The acquisition was announced in a press release which revealed that Bungie would be an independent subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment and run by its Board of Directors, chaired by Pete Parsons and Bungie’s current management team.

“We’ve had a strong partnership with Bungie since the inception of the Destiny franchise, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to officially welcome the studio to the PlayStation family,” said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

“This is an important step in our strategy to expand the reach of PlayStation to a much wider audience.” Ryan continued, “We understand how vital Bungie’s community is to the studio and look forward to supporting them as they remain independent and continue to grow. Like Bungie, our community is core to PlayStation’s DNA, and our shared passion for the gamer and building the best place to play will now evolve even further.”

In other news, Nintendo has suggested that its next console could have backwards compatibility with Switch titles. Nintendo said: “Into 6th year of Switch, and we are maintaining momentum, we are looking at how to expand and grow this 100m users, leading into next gen device.”