Following Amazon's decision to cut 14,000 jobs, a new report claims the company will “gut” its video games division as part of the move.
This according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreierwho, citing a memo sent to Amazon employees, says the company plans to reduce work on big-budget games, especially MMOs. In a note by Steven Boom (Amazon VP of Audio) Twitchand Game) wrote: “While we are proud of our success in developing and publishing AAA games, we have made the difficult decision to halt a significant portion of our AAA game development work—especially in the MMO space—at Amazon Game Studios, including significant reductions in roles at our Irvine and San Diego studios, as well as our central publishing team.”
While Amazon has not disclosed the exact number of job cuts in its gaming division, affected employees are already taking to social media, suggesting that teams from two projects – New World and the Lord of the Rings MMO, announced back in 2023 – will be affected. On LinkedIn, former Senior Gameplay Engineer Ashley Amrin wrote“I participated in layoffs at Amazon Games this morning along with my incredibly talented colleagues at New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings game (you would have loved it).”
Amazon entered the video game market in disastrous fashion by canceling its free-to-play shooter Crucible. just five months after its release in 2020 and four months after it was “not released” into beta again. His other failures include the first blow to the Lord of the Rings MMOwhich was canceled in 2021 after a dispute with a Chinese megacorporation Tencent. New World is also struggling to maintain interest after a strong start in 2021. Amazon's other big project is an upcoming project developed by Crystal Dynamics. Game Tomb Raiderwhich was they say it's going well in August last year.
