Report: Amazon lays off 180 employees in its video game divisions
180 employees in Amazon's video game division are being let go today, according to Aftermath's Nathan Grayson.
These cuts are said to affect the Prime Gaming team as part of what the outlet called a "larger goal of refocusing efforts" around it. The Amazon-backed Twitch channel Crown is said to be impacted by this, as is the Game Growth team.
For Amazon specifically, these layoffs come months after it cut 100 jobs in its games division back in April. (Cuts which came months after the larger company laid off 10,000 employees toward the end of 2022.) Like now, those reductions affected the Crown Channel and Game Growth teams, and Amazon Games' San Diego studio.
In an internal email sent to employees, VP Christoph Hermann wrote the layoffs were spurred by "changes in our business approach...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."
"After further evaluation of our businesses, it became clear that we need focus our resources and efforts to deliver great games to players now and in the future," he concluded.
The games industry has conducted thousands of layoffs throughout 2023, with November seeing cuts at Cryptic Studios, Digital Extremes, and Ubisoft. Late last week, Unity indicated it'll likely be doing some layoffs of its own in the near future.
