Amazon Lays Off About 100 Employees in Its Gaming Divisions

Amazon laid off about 100 employees in its video-game divisions as part of its broader cutbacks, affecting workers at Prime Gaming, Game Growth and the company's San Diego studio. From a report: "Our resources will be aligned to support our focus on content," Games Vice President Christoph Hartmann wrote in a memo to employees Tuesday. "Going forward, we will continue to invest in our internal development efforts, and our teams will continue to grow as our projects progress." Amazon has struggled to capitalize on its resources in gaming, including through its Crown channel, an entertainment show on the Twitch streaming service. Twitch recently cut about 400 positions. The company has canceled and even removed titles from sale since the division kicked off in 2012. Amazon has only released one internally developed game -- the online role-playing title New World, which suffered a steep decline in its player base after the September 2021 launch. The Irvine, California-based New World team will continue to grow, Hartmann said.

They have a gaming division?

[S_Stout]

News to me. Maybe they are finally realizing how much money they waste.

Re:

[DarkRookie2]

They do. It is filled with nothing but low grade garbage.

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[Darinbob]

They do have lots of execs who are Gaming The System full time.

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[Tablizer]

It probably had 101 employees. (Cue the Dalmatian jokes.)

They kept one so that they can claim the division still exists. Her sole duty is to explain what happened to the Gaming Division when people call.

Re:They have a gaming division?

[UnknownSoldier]

Yup, Amazon Games [wikipedia.org] formerly AGS (Amazon Game Studio).

It was horribly mismanaged. [reddit.com] AGS bought CryTek engine and open-sourced the engine rebranding it Lumberyard.

First they hired Mike Frazzini in 2012 to run the studio who had never shipped a game before! WTF? He left in March 2022 to spend time with his family [mmorpg.com] which is business speak for: He was fired but left to minimize attention.

They spent millions on Breakway which was cancelled on March 31, 2018.

Then they spent millions on Crucible. It was released on May 2020 but was announced to be cancelled on October 9, 2020.

Then they shipped New World which had numerous problems. It was designed to be PvP but PvP only games never sell well. They pivoted to PvE but ignored all the problems in the open betas. It was supposed to ship on May 2020 then got delayed till August 2021 then got delayed again when it finally shipped on September 28, 2021.

It had numerous client side bugs that only complete amateur programmers would make. i.e. You would be invulnerable if you dragged the game window. WTF?! Numerous gold duping killed the trade post.

It peaked at over over 913,000 players [steamcharts.com] but within one month that fell to 357K, the following month 145K, and the following month 117K before setting in around less then 25K players.

Maybe they should have made a prototype BEFORE blowing millions on 2 dead products? /s

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[nanjy]

Yea

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[nanjy]

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The New World Problem

[PubJeezy]

Wow. I can't believe New World is the only game they actually developed because it's launch was a complete and utter failure. The game was filled with massive bot swarms but Amazon has enough influence on the internet that they just made it impossible for folks in the US to find bots. It also seemed like folks that complained about bots in public forums got swarmed by trolls, downvotes and reports (on platforms like reddit). It created this absurd scenario where in-game there were bots EVERYWHERE. Not eve

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[UnknownSoldier]

AGS also developed and canceled:

* Breakway [wikipedia.org]
* Crucible [wikipedia.org]

New World moderators ignored problems like mass reporting [newworld.com] where some would get others falsely banned.

Re: The New World Problem

[dutt]

The new world player base declines. Then Amazon announces that more resources will be added to the development. Hmm, something isnâ(TM)t right, wonder what.

The Last of Us

[Bu11etmagnet]

... will turn off the lights.

A hole in my gamer heart.

[Oryan Quest]

Doesn’t Jeff know gamers are eagerly awaiting the latest chapter of and all the other beloved Amazon classics like and?