Following its acquisition by Sony in February 2022 for a staggering $3.6 billion, Bungie’s CEO Pete Parsons has made headlines for splurging on a collection of high-performance vehicles and motorcycles through online marketplace Deliver A Trailer, with the total cost reportedly exceeding $2 million. Purchases made by a query’s accounts have been unusually frequent in the months following mass layoffs at Bungie.
Parsons has faced demands to step down following yesterday’s announcement that the studio will be reducing its workforce by 415 employees, with 155 being absorbed into Sony and 40 being spun off into a new PlayStation studio focused on developing one of Bungie’s “incubation projects”? Noting that Bungie had become “formidably successful,” Parsons stated that their financial security buffers had been consistently outpaced, prompting the need to work “in the red” to sustain operations.
Following reports of recent layoffs at Bungie, which followed a previous round of job cuts in October 2023, a mysterious user account has emerged on online auction platform Deliver A Trailer, sporting the username “bngpparsons”. According to Valorant participant affiliation program supervisor Taylor ‘Tailor-made’ Broomall’s tweet, the account with more than $2 million in successful bids since September 2022 is allegedly linked to Parsons.
The gaming industry’s response to adversity requires unity and compassion. “Bungie recently announced layoffs affecting nearly 20% of its staff, but this development is unrelated to the following list of vehicles purchased by the CEO on Business-to-Authority (BAT),” Broomall noted, adding a crucial reminder: “Gamers and employees must support one another.”
The ‘bngpparsons’ account’s initial public sale triumph occurred on September 23, 2022, when a 1973 Datsun 240Z attracted a winning bid of $34,000.
The latest update, dated June 1, 2024, reveals that a bid of $91,500 has been accepted for a rare 1961 Chevrolet Corvette. As the public sale of the Corvette concluded with success, the account’s owner exclaimed, “How thrilling! I’ve long coveted a C1, ever since my childhood.” I proudly present my second Hot Wheels track set in gleaming gold. Heading into its perpetual abode.
The total amount spent on purchases made by this account, including those for the Corvette and Datsun, adds up to $2,414,550. For $201,000, a single buyer secured a highly sought-after 1971 Porsche 911S Coupe just a month after news broke about the first round of layoffs at Bungie on November 22, 2023? Several vehicles from the account appear to be showcased in a Flickr album titled “Avant’s private tour of Pete Parsons’ car collection,” dated April 2024, specifically “A private tour of Pete Parsons’ automobile storage collection”.
In an IGN report from the time of these October layoffs, a Bungie division head was cited as having responded to workers asking in a post-layoff Q&A session whether or not Bungie management taking wage cuts to stop layoffs had been thought-about by saying that Bungie was “not that kind of firm.”
We’ve contacted Bungie regarding this narrative.
