Bungie Longtime Composer Michael Salvatori Is Laid Off

Goronmon@kbin.social to Games@lemmy.world – 146 points –
kakuchopurei.com
24

Bungie's Halo soundtracks were iconic and can be laid at the feet of Marty and Michael.

I had heard that Marty was difficult to work with, but it's crazy that you wouldn't try to retain the talent that got your brand to live in millions of people's heads rent free.

Even stranger from Sony's perspective. If you bought an expensive race car and the first thing you start doing is throwing away the expensive parts in favor of cheaper ones, you no longer own a race car. You own something that looks like it, but can't perform.

definitely indication of "we dont want to pay our 20-year veteran staff what they deserve"

Yeah, the newer music did the job well, but Marty's scores transcended good videogame music. The opening chants of Halo 1 were an instant indicator you were in for something new and special.

Safe to say Bungie no longer cares about retaining high quality talent.

I found it funny that they fought so hard to regain their independence from Microsoft just to sell to Sony a decade later. Seems like a ship of Theseus situation

Or even just Activision almost immediately after leaving Microsoft. They never even released anything without having a “master”

Come now. They released some cool Mac games before they were snapped up by MS

Marathon was a blast (and Halo incorporated many elements of it).

The people who fought for independence are no longer the ones running the company. Just like with InfinityWard, the people who made the company what it is have long since left or been fired/laid off. The studio is only the same in name and by what IPs it owns. Other than that it’s basically entirely different.

They were tired of making the same fps game over and over, so they switched to making the same fps game over and over.

I'm kind of sick of the term "Laid off", it's just firing

I think from the perspective of the employee's reputation, it's an important distinction, due to the "with cause" vs. "without cause" implication.

When I hear "laid off" I think the person was probably a fine employee who they just couldn't keep around because higher-ups wanted more money. But when I hear "fired" I think "well did they take a shit on their boss's desk or something?"

A small indy company like blizzard bungie can't possibly afford to keep such a great composer on for long.

They laid off Michael sechrist too and that guy wrote deepstone lullaby. But hey, if bungie wants the soundtrack on the new destiny expansion to suck, more power to them.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but Sony acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion last year. That's not a small indy company.

Sony acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion last year.

And yet that still wasn't enough to retain proven talent. They must really be struggling to make ends meet.

But yes super sarcastic.

I thought maybe, but sometimes it's hard to tell. It was super clear with your second response though.

Laid Off = Employee did nothing wrong

Fired = Employee did something wrong (according to the company)

There's a legal difference. Never say you were fired if you can avoid it.

Same as with Martin O'Donell a few years back