More layoffs right ahead of the holiday season.
Amazon is the latest to layoff workers, this time letting go a total of 180 employees in its gaming divisions.
In a memo to staff earlier in the week, Amazon Games’ Christoph Hartmann said the company will be “refocusing our efforts for Prime Gaming”. Hartmann continued on to say that “[w]e’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. With these changes in our business approach come changes to our resourcing, resulting in the elimination of just over 180 roles.”
The layoffs seemed to be focused on Amazon Games’ Crown Channel, an ad-supported Twitch channel that hosted original programming, alongside Game Growth, a program that was meant to assist with “how game creators promote their products across the globe”. Crown Channel was in Twitch’s top 10 entertainment offerings — though Bloomberg disputes that claim — and hosted programs like the variety-themed Potluck and Screen Invaders game show.
In a statement to Polygon, Amazon Games said the layoffs were “in service of focusing efforts on making and publishing video games”.
“We will continue to support Prime Gaming as a benefit of Amazon Prime membership, but have refined that specific offering to focus on ‘Free Games with Prime,'” the Amazon Games representative continued. Free Games for Prime for November include the likes of Rage 2, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and more.
The layoffs at Amazon follow similar instances at the likes of Bungie, Media Molecule, Ubisoft and many more.
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