Amazon will lay off about 100 employees across its video game division, the executive overseeing the division wrote in a memo to staff on Tuesday.
The layoffs included employees from the Game Growth group, Amazon’s San Diego game studio, and Prime Gaming, a service for members of Amazon’s flagship loyalty program, said Christoph, vice president of Amazon Games. Hartmann wrote in a note. Some staff have been reassigned to other projects that “match our strategic focus,” Hartmann said.
“While there is never a pleasant way to share this type of news, we are committed to treating our affected employees with empathy and respect and will continue to provide retirement, health insurance benefits, outplacement services, and We support our employees by offering paid action time in their search for work,” he said.
Cuts are made, as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy did moved to keep costs down across the company.Last month, Jussy announced Amazon will lay off an additional 9,000 employees on top of the previous total job cuts. 18,000+The company has also frozen the hiring of corporate employees and closed several experimental projects, such as telemedicine services and sidewalk delivery robots.
On Tuesday afternoon, Amazon began informing employees that they were being laid off by pulling them into a meeting with HR, according to one affected employee. This person requested anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on this matter.
Since its launch in 2013, Amazon Games has struggled to produce hits despite several published projects, and the company has attracted top talent from the likes of Sony Online Entertainment. Amazon released his first big-budget game of 2020, Crucible, and canceled the free-to-play shooter within months. A year later, Amazon released his PC game New World. It was an early success and sought to capitalize on this buzz by releasing Lost Ark, an online action role-playing game last February.
Amazon’s video game division has also seen some sales with Top Rank. Mike Frazzini, who helped launch the Amazon game studio, got off March last year. And in January, John Smedley, head of Amazon Games’ San Diego studio, I left the company.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the layoffs and the memo, but declined to comment further.
Here’s the full note from Hartmann:
Hi guys,
Today, we would like to inform you about some changes happening across the gaming business and outline where we are headed.
Publishing titles from talented developers like Bandai Namco and Crystal Dynamics, as well as creating our own games in-house, we are a major source of quality gaming content that has entertained players for years. We believe you have a unique opportunity to become one of our publishers. , offering entertaining shows on Crown Channel and great content on Prime Gaming. Providing players with the best content is at the heart of what we do, and today’s changes are intended to focus our team on that commitment.
After evaluating current projects against long-term goals, the game leadership team made the difficult decision to eliminate over 100 roles at Prime Gaming, Game Growth, and the San Diego studio. strategic focus. Each employee whose role is retired should schedule his meeting live this morning. This allows us to discuss these changes directly and give each employee an opportunity to ask questions. While there is never a pleasant way to share this kind of news, we are committed to treating our affected employees with empathy and respect and will continue to provide them with retirement benefits, health insurance benefits, relocation services, and paid hours. to support employees. looking for a job.
Going forward, we will adjust our resources to support your focus on content. We will continue to invest in our internal development efforts and the team will continue to grow as the project progresses. Irvine’s New World team grows as it shifts resources to further support ongoing development. Our studio in Montreal continues to expand and is making great progress with unannounced projects. The project is not yet ready for a full production size team. He also continues to expand his publishing efforts and is actively exploring and signing new projects with great potential, such as his recent publishing deal with NCSOFT. Finally, we are optimizing our retail and backend-focused teams and scaling our teams accordingly to ensure that Amazon Games and Prime Gaming can deliver strong value and rich experiences to our customers.
We know that these decisions affect not only our business, but our teammates and friends as well. Saying goodbye to a colleague is never a good feeling. Thank you for supporting them through this change. We know these are difficult times and you have questions and concerns. The manager, L8 business his leader, and her HRBP can join the conversation. Additionally, if you are interested, a licensed counselor is available by phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. https://inside.hr.amazon.dev/us/en/employment/time-off-compensation-benefits/benefits-global/employee-assistance-program.html (U.S. Phone: 1-833-721-2323).
I am confident in the direction we are heading. Amazon Games has gone from strength to strength over the past two years, thanks to your hard work, dedication, and dedication to our players. We’ve launched two of his games, and he’s announced seven more projects, with more in the pipeline. Plus, in addition to the new Crown Show and Prime Gaming content lined up. If you have any questions or need to connect please contact me or the team he leader.
thank you,
christophe
