Amazon’s Cuts Are Reportedly Hitting It’s Gaming Division In A Big Way

You’ve probably heard about Amazon’s recent layoff plans. The company is reported to be laying off over 14,000 corporate jobs. This number was confirmed today, in a post on the About Amazon site from the company’s Senior VP of People Experience and Technology, Beth Galetti. What the post does not say, as it focuses on the broader impact on the company as a whole and the impact of AI (of course), is that it will apparently have a significant impact on the gaming division.

According to a post on Bloomberg, shared on MassivelyOP, “significant role redutions” have impacted the Amazon Game Studios offices in Irvine and San Diego. In fact, and update on Massively states that both are “gone”, with New World likely going into maintenance mode or picked up by someone else. If the statement on the game’s Steam page is anything to go by, it’ll be the former. (Yet still with the $60 price tag.) For those waiting on the Amazon Lord of the Rings game, it seems that’s done for as well.

The overall decision is to back away from online multiplayer games and MMORPGs. From what I've seen yet, there's no word about the free-to-play offerings Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty. But that may be because they're publishing those games rather than developing them.

Interestingly, it seems that the strategy game, March of Giants, is fine. As for other content, Bloomberg reports that Amazon will be working on “casual and AI-focused games” for the Luna cloud service.