Amazon is cutting 180 gaming jobs for the second time. This is part of a restructuring plan to focus on growth areas.
E-commerce giant, Amazon, is again asking around 180 workers in its gaming division to leave their jobs. The company has eliminated jobs twice in a row. The layoff is part of a wider restriction, and in an internal memo shared with gaming division staff, the business indicated that it is a strategy to focus on restructuring and growth potential.
Amazon Games Vice President Christoph Hartmann said: “After our April restructuring, we realized we needed to focus on our business’s most promising areas. Customer feedback shows that free games per month are what customers desire most, so we’re adjusting our Prime bonus to focus on that.”
On Monday, November 13, 2023, Amazon began firing employees and notified them of their termination. The e-commerce giant’s second divisional layoffs occurred this year.
According to rumors, Amazon began cutting the size of its streaming music and podcast division last week (November) and removed a few jobs from People Experience and Technology.
Each month, Amazon Gaming gives Twitch channels, downloadable games, and other services. It also develops and publishes games like ‘Blue Protocol’ and gives Prime members free games.
These are the second round of Games Division layoffs, after the business cut 100 staff. Amazon lost over 27,000 positions last year after a wave of U.S. tech layoffs. Amazon’s third-quarter net profits topped analyst estimates, and the company expects fourth-quarter revenue to be similar.
Amazon is hiring new workers amid job cuts. Hartmann said he emphasized in his email that the division is still searching for additional openings.
Amazon is apparently betting significantly on language models. They are heavily investing in Olympus, a new model with 2 trillion parameters that competes with OpenAI and Alphabet.
Conclusion
Amazon is cutting 180 gaming jobs for the second time. A wider restriction approach focuses on restructuring and high-growth regions. Amazon Games Vice President Christopher Hartmann said the company needed to focus on its most promising areas. Amazon lost over 27,000 positions last year after a wave of U.S. tech layoffs. Amazon’s third-quarter net profits topped analyst estimates, and the company expects fourth-quarter revenue to be similar. Despite staff layoffs, Amazon is still hiring and investing substantially on Olympus, a new language model with 2 trillion parameters to compete with OpenAI and Alphabet.
