Amazon Games Confirms Layoffs of About 180 Employees, a Refocus on Prime Gaming Benefit to Customers
Amazon Games has confirmed another round of layoffs, this time affecting around 180 people. This is the second time this year that the games division has had some layoffs, amid many industry layoffs and cuts on the whole.
According to a reportfrom The Verge, an email from VP Christoph Hartmann sent to employees today said “After our initial restructuring in April, it became clear that we needed to focus our resources even more on the areas that are growing with the highest potential to drive our business forward”. Affected employees began getting word of their job losses this morning.
Part of the restructuring that will happen as a result will move focus onto Prime Gaming and the free games and offers that the company offers to those with Amazon Prime memberships.
“As such, the leadership team and I have made the difficult decision to close two of our initiatives – Crown Channel and Game Growth. We are also refocusing our efforts for Prime Gaming. We’ve listened to our customers and we know delivering free games every month is what they want most, so we are refining our Prime benefit to increase our focus there.”
No details were released about what this means for the Prime Gaming benefit.
In releasing the full letter, Amazon confirmed that about 180 jobs have been lost in this latest round of cuts. Back in April, more than 100 staff members were let go from Amazon Games. This latest round follows thousands of lost jobs in total over the past year at Amazon, recently confirmed layoffs at Bungie, Digital Extremes, Ubisoft, Cryptic Studios, and Frontier Developments in the past several weeks alone.
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