The short of it is: why is he making that much money in the first place, especially at a time where the game’s industry has seen record-breaking layoffs for the past 2 years - worse than during the 2008 financial crash.
The long of it is that they’re symptoms of the same problem and show the ever increasing wealth disparity between the aristocracy and the commoners in the US. In 2020, the wealth disparity in the US was said to be on par with France just before the French Revolution, where the price of a loaf of bread hit a full day’s wages for the average worker. To add to this, at least one of the people laid off was going on scheduled maternity leave the next day, which is probably in violation of some workers’ rights law, but because the majority of states are “at will” employment states, Bungie won’t face any consequences. The average time for people in the industry to find a new job is 2-4 months, and with all the layoffs, plenty of these people will never work in the industry again. And on top of that, these workers are already exploited so badly for their passion for making games that they could see a 50% or more pay increase with lower responsibilities for the same skill set just by changing industries. There are people working at Activision-Blizzard-King who are living out of their cars because they don’t get paid enough to afford rent within commuting distance of the studio.
People are waking up to the fact that the boss makes 10 grand while we make a dime, and they’re getting pretty pissed about it.