The major tech layoffs of 2023 are not over yet, with Amazon Games joining the cohort of major tech companies restructuring.
Amazon is the latest company to join the rest of the gaming industry in cutting jobs, announcing it plans to cut 180 jobs in an attempt to restructure. This is following on from the company laying off more than 100 employees in the same division back in April.
The gaming industry has faced around 6,500 job cuts this year, with cuts coming from major gaming companies including Epic Games, Ubisoft Montreal, and Niantic.
Amazon cut around 25,000 jobs in 2023 in other departments, but is now matching the trend in their games firm, which was found in 2012.
The company, which also owns the gaming streaming website Twitch, is also abandoning its own Twitch channel after it failed to amass enough views.
Despite the cuts, Amazon had also announced a new Tomb Raider single-player game in 2022, and just this summer said it a Lord of the Rings based game was in the works.
The BBC has seen an internal email where Amazon executives explained the cause for the layoffs:
“After our initial restructuring in April, it became clear that we needed to focus our resources even more on the areas that are growing with the highest potential to drive our business forward,” Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann wrote.
The BBC did report that the email also said they were recruiting other positions in the gaming department, however.
While the industry faces a later wave of job layoffs, the gaming sector saw massive success in 2023, with highly rated games and like the newest Zelda and a new Super Mario hitting the scene.
However, the success of the games appears to not have offset the over-hiring trend in the gaming industry which hit big tech earlier in the year.
The Scottish gaming sector however has seen job growth that has outshine the rest of the UK, though this was from the 2017 to the 2019 period.
Scotland-based Rockstar Games, however, did announce a round of layoffs in 2023.
By: Elizabeth Greenberg | DigitNews