
Amazon Game Studios is set to feel the effects of a company-wide round of layoffs.
As reported by Bloomberg, the number of people affected was not disclosed, only that the job cuts in the company's video game division will be "significant".
Overall, the layoffs across the whole company will amount to an eye-watering 14,000 redundancies.
The video game-related cuts will mostly affect offices in Irvine and San Diego. Amazon has also said it'll be reducing its work on big-budget games, particularly its MMOs such as New World.
Here's a quote from Steve Boom, vice president of Audio, Twitch, and Games, sent to staff in an email:
"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."
It sounds as though work is set to continue on other Amazon Game Studios projects, such as Tomb Raider, but unfortunately the number of people is set to shrink.
Layoffs have been rife in the video game space for a good couple of years or so, and sadly this is the latest major example. This year, varying degrees of layoffs have hit EA, Xbox, People Can Fly, Bend Studio, and many more.
[source bloomberg.com]





Comments 43
That's a real shame. Although I didn't partake in the multiplayer aspects of New World (PvP etc.), I did spend an enormous amount of time playing it. Fully played two seasons, and have the coinage to indulge in another. Hopefully it sticks around for a while yet.
It's always sad to see people losing their jobs, so hopefully it is handled well, and the people affected find new employment quickly. It must be terribly worrying for them.
My youngest son wanted to get involved in game making, and I have to say I'm glad that he didn't...
14000 jobs going is mental. That level of layoffs would normally involve some sort of dialogue with governments because redundancies mean a higher toll on the welfare state. But Amazon act like their own dictatorship, they genuinely do not care about their employees or the countries in which they operate.
What a massive shame, so many people losing their jobs. Hopefully they can all have a quick turn around on employment.
@Fiendish-Beaver When I was in high school, I wanted to be an animator for a game studio, but in retrospective, I'm glad I never got into the game industry.
It seems to be an industry that always has an air of uncertainty hanging over it, @Deadlyblack. One false step and a studio can go under. The game you make doesn't even have to be bad, it just has to fail to find an audience, and you're done for. I wouldn't want to be involved in something like that myself, and I'm glad my son didn't take that route...
Other than New World, what have they done? I struggle to think of any other games without googling.
Hopefully the talent that they lose goes on to open an independent studio and is able to develop games based on their own creative ideas and we are able to gain fun and unique experiences.
Big corpos with game divisions seem to be struggling and indies have been firing, IMO.
Aren't they in the running to buy WB as well.
Removed - inappropriate; user is banned
@Striker21 Did you not read the part where they are laying off 14,000 staff, and you are talking about wanting them to buy other studios?!? tone deft much...
@dskatter There's uhhhhh... The Grand Tour Game?
Why did they even need 14 000 people in the first place?
@Striker21 Interesting takeaways from an article about Amazon laying off 14,000 workers and reducing game development…
And why in the world would anyone want Amazon to have a significant stake in this industry?
Removed - flaming/arguing
Removed - flaming/arguing
@ButterySmooth30FPS they used AI to share that slop don’t pay it any attention lol
@Orpheus79V I don’t think I even knew there was a Grand Tour game. Huh!
@nessisonett I think most of the job losses are in the US, so the only impact on the welfare state will be the number of bootstraps handed out for people to pull themselves up with.
@Striker21 Please consider AI Hallucination when going over whatever your chosen AI is feeding you.
They don't always come back to you with facts. Very often it's just whatever sounds right based on your preferences and what others have said in similar scenarios. Essentially, it's telling you what you want to hear.
I’m not sure what I’m more surprised by: that they are laying off an eye watering 14,000 employees or that their game division has anything like that number. What of note have they released? Lost Ark? Crucible? New World? The Grand Tour?
@opo02 That would explain all the non sense they were spouting on Sunday, thanks!
@get2sammyb Worth adding a ban on AI generated comments to the community rules? If it gets out of hand then all engagement is dead.
I always wanted to try New World. Guess now I never will
@nessisonett Problem is, it's sometimes hard to discern the difference between an AI-generated comment and a non-AI-generated one. Some people like saying that every lengthy comment they disagree with was made by AI. There's also people who sometimes write comments in a formal tone, and everyone falsely claims that they are AI-generated
@themightyant No one knows the game number, 14k seems to be all of AI, AWS, etc,part of a larger corporate 30k. Some are just employees they fired b/c thry wouldn't, or couldn't, "return to the office".
https://deadline.com/2025/10/amazon-job-cuts-hit-video-games-division-1236600254/
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/amazon-lay-off-about-14000-roles-2025-10-28/
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/amazon-targets-many-30000-corporate-job-cuts-sources-say-2025-10-27/
https://deadline.com/2025/10/amazon-job-cuts-hit-video-games-division-1236600254/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/amazon-layoffs-corporate-workers-ai.html
@nessisonett Would involve a "functioning government", which we no longer have. Also I think WARN notices only come into affect when about 10% of a company is laid-iff, and Amazon has 1.5mil employees so the 14k, or 30k number also announced, probably isn't large enough. 🤷♂️
Also, this is the worst comment section I've ever read, and I've been annoying people here for 15 years. This is a very international site though, so it's possible AI looking comments could just be translation issues, so it might be difficult to tell what's AI and what's Google Translate of a broken mind. Banning Americans could be a way to go though.🤣
@Dalamar Amazon like a lot of companies over-hired during lockdown.
A lot of these job losses is pure greed too mind you.
@dskatter It had an interesting hook of having you go through playable versions of actual episodes. It was utter pants though.
I just want a new Tomb Raider. Doubt it will ever happen now.
@Stevemalkpus I've been a massive TR fan since a sweaty-palmed 20 year old version of myself purchased the original for PS1 on launch day!
Personally I think I'd rather have nothing, than have whatever they were going to spew out. They have no respect for the IP and no creative passion or real talent.
They simply have the IP and need to shove it out there to earn some money for them.
I'd prefer if they'd let it sit in the wilderness for a good 10 years. Start working up some early concepts in the mid-2030's, release in the early 2040's if I'm still alive then.
I'd like to see a big leap. Similar to the jump from the 1996 to 2013 versions. I don't see the in-development game really doing much that Rise/Shadow didn't do. Just prettier graphics but with a low frame-rate and a load of stutter.
@dskatter Crucible 🤷♂️
Don't think they've made any good games. What games have they made, just New World?
I know they've published Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark. But none were good. Well I thought Throne and Liberty was ok, but lost interest. It wasn't that good.
@UltimateOtaku91
The movie part of WB, not the gaming one.
Gaming one is useless outside Netherrealm since most studios have no original IP of their own.
@nessisonett @Shepherd_Tallon @opo02
How do you know if I use AI or not? Does it even matter as long as I am making valid arguments and contributing positively to the discussion or debate? Personally, I am using Grammarly autocorrection to avoid any grammar mistakes because I type too fast, but I make my own comments, not generated by AI.
Everyone is feeling the rising costs and economic uncertainty. Consumers are not spending as much on Leisure activities, such as gaming - opting to play F2P games like Fortnite or Roblox, playing games they've owned for ages like Minecraft or GTA, maybe at most buying 'old' games in sales rather than buying 'new' games on release.
If they aren't getting the customers spending Money in their games/services, then they aren't generating 'revenue' they can invest into their current games in devlopment. Also, if they think they'll sell 6m+ copies and had budgeted for that, but then the game doesn't sell that well, they can lose money. Also if they think a game will even se;ll 4-5m copies but if they spend another year or more making the game, they'll need to sell 6m+ to break even, its better to cancel now than keep pouring money in...
I don't want to bring 'politics' and real world situations to Gaming when most use gaming to escape from those, but unfortunately they are having a big impact on our favourite leisure activity. Sometimes it may work for us - like Loot boxes and gambling laws but sometimes Global events impact on everything.
Covid could have been bad for Leisure activites but people spent money as they were stuck at home - Games and Guitars saw a boom in sales as people had time on their hands, but some thought Gaming would be hit as people wouldn't spend 'limited' money on Leisure, now they are working to try and make ends meet, have little free time and disposible income so 'leisure' is being hit hard.
amazon game studios has not put out a game worth a damn. there is a good chance that all of amazon's game studios are very poorly managed and will never get that tomb raider game off the ground anyways. would it surprise anyone if they close up shop?
@dskatter Same here. Other then New World, Bandai Namco cutting off Blue Protocol I think which would use AWS.
Amazon Luna 'exists' but how many use it/know about it compared to others.
I can't think of many things. AWS for many services sure, but games Amazon has published or had a main team develop I have no clue.
New World is pretty good but that team did as much as they could.
By the looks of in all 3 sources it seems big scale stuff, so no wonder. XD Some smaller scale in there too but nothing noteworthy or advertised well enough to hear about them.
Here is a list of the few games on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/AmazonGames
Not heard of any of these 'I think' other then New World and Lost Ark.
https://www.amazongamestudios.com/en-us/games
Others here never heard of either.
I forgot about the The Grand Tour video game as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Games
But other then mostly I assume Fire OS/TV releases since 2010, only the last few years/2019 onwards have they supported consoles.
@rjejr thank you, that makes a LOT more sense. I re-read the article but it was unclear and slightly misleading, when it says 14,000 “across the whole company” the company they just mentioned was Amazon Game Studios. And the only quotes they give relate to games.
@Striker21
Forgive my wordy reply:
I do a lot of interviews where I work, and lately a lot of that involves identifying AI submissions.
Mar shampla - “Workforce of 25.00” is the kind of thing we sometimes see on a rushed submission where the candidate didn't take the time to read over what their AI had written for them. It's a formatting hiccup AI sometimes makes when converting text. It should be “25,000.”
Combine that with the corporate tone and the facts without sources and it's kind of a smoke without the fire scenario.
To my original point, I don't see too many facts quoted to me that don't have sources, but up until a few months ago you might have heard of a few political speeches that mentioned studies that didn't exist. I'd bet my bank acc that the person speaking really did believe what they were saying, but their speech writers used AI to do the speech, and AI is crud for anything that requires facts.
I had an AI model a month ago tell me a fact based on a study, but when I asked it to link the study it told me there was no such study. So I asked it why it referenced a non existent study. It told me, I kid you not, that it was simply the direction the conversation was going in and it was the kind of thing people said in those scenarios. Then it went on to explain AI Hallucination to me and told me that unless I tell it to, it won't necessarily provide me with facts, and it's just by chance that sometimes AI in general generates correct statements.
AI is good for bouncing ideas off of or kick starting your creative process for art or fiction, but that's it. It's not intelligent in any sense. It's an overprocessed calculator that gives wrong answers most of the time, and correct answers some of the time.
@themightyant Games journalism amirite? At least they didn't blame Biden. 😂
In their defense I still haven't found the number,linking to a paywalled Bloomberg article wasn't helping. I unfortunately care about this stuff b/c 3 years ago my kid graduated from college w/ a BS in Game Design & Development (can't blame the kid, I picked the school and the major) so this all affects me. And I'm a stock market news junky. That's on me too.😝
Looked around and nothing new on the Games division layoff number. I did find out about an "AI powered" Snoop Dog game. Which I'm pretty sure in a few days I'm just going to think I imagined
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/amazon-games-is-making-major-layoffs-as-it-shifts-focus-away-from-mmos-to-its-luna-cloud-gaming-platform-we-have-made-the-difficult-decision-to-halt-a-significant-amount-of-our-first-party-aaa-game-development/
@Shepherd_Tallon Thanks for that real world stuff. As someone who talks to Alexa every day to ask the weather, sports score, set a timer, etc, I have no interest in anything calling itself AI, and I'm certainly not paying for it.
Though I suppose it's good people do, should help make it better in the future. Kind of like how No Man's Sky was a bit if a bust or letdown at launch but after multiple years of updates people seem to like it more now. AI is alpha stage NMS, beta testers beware.
@Shepherd_Tallon
Look, dude, I get that AI is getting out of hand, and the internet is full of AI filler content. My point is that I don't use ready-made text from generative AI and copy/paste like some of you accused me. I just use Grammarly autocorrect addon, which is useful when I want to type fast to write long comments without worrying about any grammar mistakes. That's all.
@rjejr I'm the same. Outside of work Alexa is as much as I have time for. Just a tool to give me an assist during the day.
tbf AI does have great potential to assist people in general, and we use it on our team in work a lot to help us with our day to day tasks too.
The problem is that the companies making AI are selling it like it's the computer on Star Trek, so anyone not familiar with what they're actually dealing with can potentially be exposed to so much misinformation. Also, as you mention it's all still in the testing phase, and we're all the testers.
We encourage our team to use AI to assist them with their tasks. Something to kick-start a process that they can then build on. But if someone was to turn something in that was just AI with no human input I'd flag it so fast.
1 - They'd just be getting the AI to do their job for them.
2 - Whatever they were turning in could potentially be unreliable junk because AI can't do their job.
It's disheartening to hear about the significant layoffs at Amazon Game Studios. The shift away from first-party AAA game development, especially MMOs like New World, is a bold move. I wonder how this will impact the gaming industry as a whole. @fnf
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