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Amazon Games has laid off 180 employees across Crown Channel and the Game Growth team. The cuts are part of a larger goal to focus more on Prime Gaming.
Amazon Games confirmed the layoffs to Aftermath. “We’ve listened to our customers, and we know delivering free games every month is what they want most, so we are refining our Prime benefit to increase our focus there,” Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann said in an email to employees.
He continued, “With these changes in our business approach come changes to our resourcing, resulting in the elimination of just over 180 roles.” Crown Channel is one of Amazon’s channels on Twitch, focusing on ad-supported original programming.
Layoffs have run rampant in the video game industry this year, including Bungie and BioWare. This isn’t Amazon’s first round of layoffs in 2023 either. Earlier this year, Amazon laid off around 100 employees in its games division. However, the company is still dedicated to internal game development.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Crown Channel reportedly wasn’t as popular as Amazon said it was and was artificially inflating its viewership numbers. Currently, Amazon Games is continuing to work on Lost Ark and New World, as well as developing a new Lord of the Rings MMO.
