Amazon is eliminating its gaming content material channel amid bigger video games layoffs

Hi there everybody,

I’ve some necessary information to share with you all as we speak about the way forward for our enterprise.

As I’ve shared beforehand, our purpose for Amazon Video games is to grow to be one of many main creators of high-quality gaming content material that delights gamers for years to return. A part of this daring imaginative and prescient includes experimentation as we discover what players need most and we repeatedly overview these experiments to make sure we’re creating probably the most impression.

After our preliminary restructuring in April, it grew to become clear that we would have liked to focus our sources much more on the areas which might be rising with the best potential to drive our enterprise ahead. As such, the management workforce and I’ve made the troublesome choice to shut two of our initiatives – Crown Channel and Recreation Development. We’re additionally refocusing our efforts for Prime Gaming. We’ve listened to our clients and we all know delivering free video games each month is what they need most, so we’re refining our Prime profit to extend our focus there. With these adjustments in our enterprise strategy come adjustments to our resourcing, ensuing within the elimination of simply over 180 roles.

I do know that is troublesome information and that the impression will likely be felt extensively. It by no means feels good to say goodbye to colleagues. This isn’t a choice the management workforce got here to rapidly; it was the results of intensive concerns and street mapping for our future. We’re happy with the work the groups have been doing, pushing into new areas with weekly content material on Crown Channel, and discovering extra methods to assist publishers attain new audiences with Recreation Development. However after additional analysis of our companies, it grew to become clear that we want focus our sources and efforts to ship nice video games to gamers now and sooner or later.

Every worker whose position has been impacted ought to now have a stay assembly scheduled this morning so we will talk about these adjustments immediately. We’re additionally working to make sure all impacted staff are given the assist they want on a person degree, together with severance pay, outplacement providers, medical health insurance advantages and extra. Your managers, enterprise leaders and HRBPs can be found for conversations and we now have a licensed counselor accessible 24/7 via our Worker Help Program.

I acknowledge that that is the second time this 12 months that you’re listening to about org-wide workforce adjustments and seeing colleagues go, so let me be very clear once I say this: I stay assured in our future. We’re growing and publishing nice video games with excessive potential, our studio groups are rising, and our roadmap is vibrant. We’re targeted on our upcoming publishing launches for Throne and Liberty and Blue Protocol, in addition to future tasks like our Tomb Raider and The Lord of the Rings video games, and our tasks with Glowmade and Disruptive Video games. Our inner studios are actively recruiting and hiring to fill important roles as they develop new IP, whereas Prime Gaming continues to safe offers and ship compelling content material for members each month. We’re dedicated to our imaginative and prescient of changing into one of many main builders and publishers of high-quality video games, and focusing our sources accordingly will assist us get there.