Layoffs have been sweeping through the games industry as of late, with countless people losing their jobs at Epic Games, Ubisoft, Bungie, Digital Extremes, and many other developers and publishers, and despite the sheer amount of this terrible news that has affected the games industry in 2023, Amazon Games is now adding to it.
Because as per an internal email shared with Aftermath, it has been revealed that Amazon is letting go of 180 members of its games division. The reason for the layoffs comes as Amazon is looking to refocus its Prime Gaming efforts and the 'free' content that is made available by connecting your Amazon Prime account with your Twitch account.
The email, from VP of Amazon Games, Christoph Hartmann, states: "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. With these changes in our business approach come changes to our resourcing, resulting in the elimination of just over 180 roles."
These layoffs don't seem to have affected any of Amazon's game studios as of yet, but it will see the Crown Channel Twitch channel and the Game Growth team being scaled back or laid off entirely.