Amazon Lays Off “Just Over” 180 Employees From Its Amazon Gaming Division
- Amazon announced that it will be shutting down its “Crown Channel” gaming channel on Twitch.
- The company is also laying off 180 employees working on their Game Growth division.
- They have announced that they will be refocusing their future efforts on publishing new games through Prime Gaming.
Amazon has just announced that it’s laying off “just over” 180 employees from two of its gaming divisions – the “Crown Channel” Twitch gaming channel and its Game Growth team for marketing games.
This is what Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann had to say:
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.
By laying off more than 180 employees, they have decided to refocus their attention on creating high-quality free games. These games will be playable by Amazon Prime Gaming subscribers. Currently, they are actively developing two live-service MMO games – New World and Lost Ark.
Hartmann also had this to add:
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.
A majority of these layoffs come from Amazon Gaming’s San Diego Studio. In addition, they are focusing most of their efforts on publishing Bandai Namco’s new MMO Blue Protocol. They are also actively developing a new Tomb Raider game, along with a new Lord of the Rings MMO as well.
