Amazon Games Lays Off 180 Employees As Quarterly Revenue Goes Up

180 more folks are looking for jobs in the video game industry just before the holidays thanks to Amazon's cost-cutting measures within the Amazon Games division. The layoffs affect the Crown Channel on Twitch and the Game Growth team. Amazon will refocus its efforts on Prime Gaming, providing free games and in-game content to Amazon Prime members.

We reached out to Amazon Games for a comment and were supplied with the same email Aftermath, who originally posted the news, was supplied with earlier today. Amazon Games also reiterated to MMOBomb that their focus is on making games and publishing games. Whether it is their own New World or the upcoming Blue Protocol, these layoffs align with that focus in mind. Unfortunately, that means some employees on the Prime Gaming side were laid off.

“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. With these changes in our business approach come changes to our resourcing, resulting in the elimination of just over 180 roles,” wrote Christoph Hartmann, VP of Amazon Games, in an email to employees. 

This round of layoffs follows another that took place back in April which eliminated around 100 jobs. 

CNBC reports that in October, Amazon's revenue rose 13% for Q3 to $143.1 billion, while net income tripled to $9.9 billion up from $2.9 billion the year before. I'd bet CEO Andy Jassy got a nice fat bonus for that.