Amazon is firing 100 employees across its video games unit. The layoffs include staffers in the Game Growth group, which happens to be the company's gaming studio in San Diego. The layoffs have also taken place in Prime Gaming, which is targeted at the members of the e-commerce giant's mainstay loyalty programme, CNBC reported.
Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann in a memo said that some employees were ‘reassigned’ to other projects matching the company's strategic focus. He said that the company is committed to treating the affected employees with empathy and respect, and will back them through severance pay, health insurance benefits, outplacement services and paid time to carry out job searches.
Last month, Amazon had said that it was heading to cost cutting across the organisation, with the chief executive officer (CEO) Andy Jassy announcing layoffs of 9,000 employees. The layoffs were in additional to the job cuts involving more than 18,000 employees. Besides imposing a hiring freeze, the company has shut down some projects including sidewalk delivery robot and teleheath service.
On Tuesday, Amazon began informing affected employees that they were being laid off by ‘pulling them into meeting’ with the human resources team, one of the impacted employee told the website on condition of anonymity.
According to report, Amazon Games struggled to produce a hit despite several projects since launch in 2013. The company had released its first big-budget game ‘Crucible’ in 2020, before cancelling the free-to-play shooter game within a few months. Later, it released PC game New World which had enjoyed some early success.
Amazon Games had experienced churn among the top ranks of leadership. Mike Frazzini, the man credited with helping in the launch of the game studio, stepped down last March. In January this year, Amazon Games' San Diego studio head John Smedley exited the company.