Amazon Game Studios Lays Off Employees And Cancels Unannounced Projects
While the gaming community was engrossed with the announcements, reveals, and fanfare over at E3 earlier this week, Amazon Game Studios took the opportunity to quietly lay off dozens of employees and reportedly cancel a number of unannounced projects.
According to Kotaku, Amazon gave the affected employees 60 days to look for a new job within Amazon. Severance packages await those who fail to find a role within the company by the end of the buffer period.
Amazon later confirmed the report saying:
“Amazon Game Studios is reorganizing some of our teams to allow us to prioritize development of New World, Crucible, and new unannounced projects we’re excited to reveal in the future. These moves are the result of regular business planning cycles where we align resources to match evolving, long-range priorities. We’re working closely with all employees affected by these changes to assist them in finding new roles within Amazon. Amazon is deeply committed to games and continues to invest heavily in Amazon Game Studios, Twitch, Twitch Prime, AWS, our retail businesses, and other areas within Amazon.”
Amazon Game Studios is currently working on two games: Crucible and New World. Amazon entered the gaming industry with their flagship game Breakaway which was cancelled back in March 2018 before it was ever released. A number of prominent hires have also left the company over the past few years including Portal director Kim Swift and Far Cry 2 Director Clint Hocking.
