Another day, another round of video game industry layoffs. This time Amazon is laying off roughly 180 employees from its gaming division, as confirmed in an internal email from Christoph Hartmann, VP of Amazon Games.
As reported by Aftermath on November 13, Amazon is letting go of around 180 employees in its games division. Aftermath’s Nathan Grayson reports that these layoffs include the entire staff of the Amazon-owned Twitch channel known as Crown Channel. The site was able to confirm with Amazon that the layoffs were happening and received a copy of the email sent by Hartmann to company employees.
In the email from Hartmann, the Amazon exec explained that it is listening to its customers and will be focusing more of its resources on the free games that Amazon Prime members receive each month. Hartmann blames these changes for today’s layoffs.
“I know this is difficult news and that the impact will be felt widely,” Hartmann said.
“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.”
The exec explained that Amazon was “proud of the work” done by these employees, but added: “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.”
This latest round of layoffs hitting Amazon’s gaming division follows April layoffs that saw over 100 employees from the same department eliminated. And as anyone paying attention to the game industry in 2023 has likely noticed, these mass layoffs are becoming a trend.
Since the start of 2023 Firaxis, Ubisoft, Unity, CD Projekt Red, EA, Take-Two, Riot Games, Meta and more have laid off hundreds of employees. The layoffs have become an almost weekly occurrence across the industry, leading to developers pushing harder for unionization to provide workers with more rights and protection.
