Amid all the revelry of sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Amazon Game Studios was first founded in 2012, but has had a difficult time finding its foothold as a developer. In 2017, the studio canceled their first game, a hero brawler called Breakaway. Amazon has purchased studios in Seattle and San Diego and made a large investment into the Crytek engine, which Amazon has sparsely used. Amazon also went out of its way to recruit talent like Portal director Kim Swift and Far Cry 2 director Clint Hocking, both of whom are no longer part of Amazon Game Studios. This is the first time Amazon’s fledgling game studio has been hit with layoffs.
According to the hit Amazon Prime series, the games New World and Crucible, and several unannounced projects. However, Amazon did confirm that some unannounced projects have been canceled as a result of the layoffs.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said:
“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.”
Despite cancellations and departures, Amazon Game Studios has managed to avoid layoffs until this point, but this news just adds to a series of bad omens. Amazon hasn’t stated any reasoning behind the layoffs or the exact number of employees who were let go, but it’s hard to imagine the financial struggles of a studio with Amazon’s corporate backing and the potential to play Skyrim through Alexa. It remains to be seen how Amazon Game Studios can recover and, but hopefully the studio will make good use of Amazon’s investments before more people are out of work.
Source: Kotaku