Arabic
In a move described as the largest in the company’s history, Amazon has begun implementing a new plan to reduce its expenses that includes laying off more than 14,000 of its administrative staff, with confirmation that the Amazon Games and Twitch divisions will be directly affected.
According to the Bloomberg report, the layoffs will extend to the gaming and cloud computing departments within the company, including the Irvine and San Diego offices, in addition to the central publishing department, and according to the internal mail sent by Steve Boom, vice president of audio and gaming departments at Amazon, he explained that the company will significantly reduce the development of huge AAA games, especially MMO games, with large numbers of workers being laid off from these projects.
Boom said in the letter:
“We are proud of what we have achieved in game development and publishing, but we have made the difficult decision to discontinue a large number of AAA game projects, especially MMOs, and to restructure our teams in Irvine and San Diego and our centralized deployment.
The list of layoffs also includes prominent Twitch employees, including Tarfu, who spent more than 11 years on the platform:
“I was in charge of Twitch’s anti-fraud programs, I worked to protect the platform from scammers stealing profits but apparently I did my job so well that they let me go.
This new wave comes after a previous layoff in 2022 that included 27,000 employees, and according to a Reuters report, this round will be the largest in Amazon’s history, as affected employees will be notified via email in the coming days.
It is expected that Amazon will soon reveal its alternative plan to manage the gaming departments after these drastic changes at a time when many followers are wondering about the fate of Amazon Games, which has been betting on huge projects in recent years.
