Amazon lays off 180 people from its game division
Amazon has laid off 180 people from its games division, including the entirety of the Crown Channel Twitch channel and the Game Growth team.
The company's aim is to refocus efforts around Prime Gaming, which offers free games and in-game content as part of an Amazon Prime subscription.
«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,» wrote Christoph Hartmann, VP of Amazon Games in an internal email shared with Aftermath.
«With these changes in our business approach come changes to our resourcing, resulting in the elimination of just over 180 roles.»
Hartmann continued: «It never feels good to say goodbye to colleagues. This isn't a decision the leadership team came to quickly; it was the result of extensive considerations and road mapping for our future. We are proud of the work the teams have been doing, pushing into new areas with weekly content on Crown Channel, and finding more ways to help publishers reach new audiences with Game Growth. But after further evaluation of our businesses, it became clear that we need to focus our resources and efforts to deliver great games to players now and in the future.»
Amazon's game studios appear to be unaffected by these latest layoffs.
Crown Channel was a Twitch channel backed by Amazon, the platform's parent company. It offered regular gaming shows with well known streamers and content creators. A Bloomberg report from February claimed Amazon was artificially inflating the channel's viewership.
This is the second round of cuts to Amazon's game division this year, after 100 employees were laid off in April from the Game Growth and Prime Gaming teams.
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