Amazon Games has laid off about 100 employees working for Amazon Games, according to a new report, but the company’s studios working on New World and an unannounced project will continue to grow.
The report, from Bloomberg, cites an internal memo sent to employees from Christoph Hartmann, Amazon Games’ Vice President. According to Hartmann, “Going forward, we will continue to invest in our internal development efforts, and our teams will continue to grow as our projects progress”.
The layoffs affect “workers at Prime Gaming, Game Growth and the company’s San Diego studio,” according to the report. Amazon Games is working on two unannounced projects in San Diego and Montreal. For the project in the San Diego office Hartmann says that they will “double down on the pre-production phase”. The Montreal studio will “continue to expand”.
Amazon has been cutting back significantly, having laid off over 27,000 employees over the past several months. Losing 100 people across the Games division is comparatively small, though it depends on where the cuts were. Several hundred people were also laid off at Amazon-owned Twitch recently.
The New World team will continue to grow, according to Hartmann. New World just released its first new season in its shift to a quarterly content model. It remains Amazon’s so far only internally developed and released game. While declarations of continued growth sound optimistic for the Irvine, CA-based New World team.
So, while there are some cuts, most of the teams we know are active on projects are referred to as growing or expanding. Amazon Games has also gone into publishing, successfully publishing Smilegate RPG’s Lost Ark and has publishing deals for anticipated games like Bandai Namco’s Blue Protocol and NCSoft’s Throne and Liberty on the way.
We’ve reached out for comment and will update if we learn more.
[Update 3:35PT/6:35ET] Amazon responded to our request for comment, sending us the full statement made by Hartmann to employees. The statement mentions the above as we've relayed, but also goes into detail about how Amazon is helping affected employees, and looking ahead to the future. Per the statement, those affected by the layoffs will be given severance pay, health insurance benefits, paid time to job search, as well as outplacement services by the company.
Hartmann also looks ahead, confirming that both the Montreal and Irvine-based New World studio will continue to expand. He also states that the San Diego-based AGS team's project is "not yet ready for a full production size team," which may explain why that studio was hit with the layoffs. Harmann also mentions at the close of the statement that there are both new Crown Channel shows and Prime Gaming content in the works, as well as stating that in addition to the two games launched and "seven more projects announced" there is "even more in the pipeline" coming up.