Amazon Lays Off 100 Employees As It Invests In New World Studio’s Growth

Amazon has undergone another round of layoffs in addition to the 9,000 workers that it laid off last month. This time around that company dismissed 100 employees from its San Diego studio and Prime Gaming arm. According to CNBC, this brings the total number of employees that the company has laid off up to roughly 27,000 in just the past year.

“After evaluating our current projects against our long-term goals, the Games leadership team made the difficult decision to eliminate just over 100 roles across Prime Gaming, Game Growth and in our San Diego studio, while also reassigning some employees to other projects that match our strategic focus,” Amazon announced. “Going forward, our resources will be aligned to support our focus on content. We will continue to invest in our internal development efforts, and our teams will continue to grow as our projects progress.”

One of the teams that will benefit from the said investment will be the New World dev team over at Amazon’s Irvine studio and its Montreal studio which is reportedly working on a new unannounced project.

As for the San Diego studio, Amazon Vice President Christoph Hartmann confirms that work on its unannounced project will continue despite the recent layoffs. “The San Diego studio will double down on the pre-production phase of their unannounced game, as that project is not yet ready for a full production size team.

Hartmann also maintains that its publishing arm will continue to operate as before and that they’ll still be publishing the highly-awaited western ports of NCSoft’s Throne and Liberty and Bandai Namco’s Blue Protocol.

In light of the ongoing mass layoffs in the video game industry, Intrepid Studios’ Steve Sharif has expressed his willingness to hire displaced developers for various roles in the Ashes of Creation dev team.

Pained to hear about the continued layoffs @amazongames and @disney. If you or anyone you know has been affected by the recent turmoil in our industry, do not hesitate to reach out to our team @AshesofCreation. We are hiring across the board for talented developers to help us… pic.twitter.com/AYmsc5a43I

— Steven Sharif (@StevenJSharif) April 5, 2023