Leaked Memo Outlines Amazon’s Forthcoming Gaming Division Cull
- Leaked memo details Amazon’s strategic changes to Amazon Games
- Around 14,000 roles to be removed as Amazon ends New World updates and shifts to AI and party games like Courtroom Chaos
- Netflix closes Boss Fight after Night School and Team Blue, pivoting to party-style games
- Both firms join wider industry cuts, refocusing on AI, cloud, and multiplayer projects
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Amazon Reverting Focus To What It Does Best
In a leaked memo shared by Deadline on Oct. 28, Amazon has spent the last several months evaluating plans to deliver improved gaming experiences while also leaning into the things it does best. Unfortunately for thousands of the tech company’s staff, this means losing their jobs in a continued effort by Amazon to streamline its workforce for efficiency.
Steve Boom, Vice President of Audio, Twitch, and Games, who authored the leaked memo, revealed the current extent to the impending job cuts across the games division. One intent is to focus on more AI-related games, after taking what he called “a critical look at the evolving dynamics of the games industry and competitive landscape.”
“While we’re proud of our successes in first-party AAA game development and publishing, we have made the difficult decision to halt a significant amount of our first-party AAA game development work – specifically around MMOs – within Amazon Game Studios, including making significant role reductions in our studios in Irvine and San Diego, as well as our central publishing team,” Boom wrote in the memo.
Continuation Of Amazon CEO Plan From 2024 To Cut Jobs
Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, started an initiative in September 2024 to reduce the number of managers, to try and cut out unnecessary work culture like pre-meetings for pre-meetings. Partly as a result of this, the company is set to lose around 14,000 jobs, with significant cuts across its gaming division.
Amazon posted news on Oct. 27 referencing this. “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs,” said Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon.
“While this will include reducing in some areas and hiring in others, it will mean an overall reduction in our corporate workforce of approximately 14,000 roles.”
One game affected by the impending job cuts is New World: Aeternum. Despite releasing a huge game update to its MMORPG New World: Aeternum just two weeks ago, Amazon yesterday announced that this also marks the final content update for the game. The bittersweet news is that while this undoubtedly involves people being laid-off, the game itself is not being sunsetted.
“While New World will not be receiving new content updates, servers will be live through 2026. Our focus has been on completing the Season 10: Nighthaven content update and sharing it with our players,” said Amazon. Meanwhile, it promised “World bosses, bonus weeks, and some seasonal events will continue, but there will be no more holiday events.”
It wasn’t all bad news, though, as Bloom noted that March of Giants, a new free-to-play 4v4 MOBA being developed by the Amazon Montreal studio, conducted “a successful closed alpha” test in September.
“Finally, we are continuing to work with our external studio partners Crystal Dynamics on an upcoming Tomb Raider title and Maverick Games on an upcoming open world driving game,” he added.
Party Games Are The Future
Last week, Amazon posted news about its Luna relaunch. This is the company’s own games platform, which is powered by AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud computing, and it streams games via PC, iOS, Android, Mac and smart TVs. It’s included with Prime membership, but otherwise can be accessed via a separate subscription.
The relaunch comes with over 50 games, and a new GameNight feature that collects together more than 25 multiplayer/party titles. Some of these will be exclusive Amazon Game Studios products including the “human-built, AI-powered, voice-driven improv courtroom game,” Courtroom Chaos: Starring Snoop Dogg, which is unfortunately a real thing.
This move to party-based games is also shared by Netflix, which has also been culling its own game division over the last year to shift focus to casual multiplayer titles.
Netflix Cuts Another Studio Loose
The streaming giant has shut down Boss Fight, the studio it bought in March 2022. Boss Fight is behind popular games based on Netflix shows, primarily Squid Game Unleashed and Money Heist: Ultimate Choice. Netflix itself didn’t share the news, however – this was down to Boss Fight CEO and Co-Founder David Rippy, who posted on LinkedIn.
“Rough news, for sure, but I’m very grateful for the time we had at Netflix. We worked with some awesome people and made many games that I’m very proud of, including Squid Game Unleashed which hit #1 in 26 countries.”
This follows news from February this year when Netflix laid off staff from Night School, the studio behind Thronglets, Oxenfree and its sequel. Netflix bought the studio in 2021. This itself came after Netflix shuttered Team Blue, its AAA studio, in October 2024 after less than two years of operation.
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