Lays offs are nothing new in the gaming industry. I mean, the business has been infamous for its utter lack of job security for the better part of twenty years now, so it probably doesn’t surprise anyone to hear that people are losing their jobs. What is a little surprising though, is that anybody expected otherwise, especially when a corporate giant like Amazon is involved.

Aftermath reports that Amazon is in the process of eliminating 180 employees from its games division. This includes of Crown Channel, a Twitch channel that was backed by the company, and something called the “Game Growth Team,” which apparently had something to do with helping publishers who worked with Amazon reach new audiences.

It would seem that neither entity achieved the sorts of results that Amazon was looking for, so off they go. This comes only a few months after the 100-man lay-off back in April. Instead, Amazon will be putting more resources into “Prime Gaming,” the gaming portion of its subscription service. The aim simply seems to be offering more of other makers/publishers games rather than making/publishing any more of its own.

People losing their work is never a great thing to see, yet one cannot help but feel like most should have seen this coming after the failure of its New World MMORPG and the debacle that was Google’s Stadia service. Both of these giant companies entered the business solely in the hopes of massive quick and easy returns, and when they inevitably failed to get those sorts of returns, they both reacted the same way. Google completely shuttered Stadia and left everyone involved high and dry, both customer and employee alike. Now it looks like Amazon is doing the same, jumping back out of the business as quickly as it can manage.

I can say “good riddance” when it comes to the companies themselves since the last thing gamers need is more megacorps trying to sqeeze them for every last cent. Still though, this really sucks for everyone who thought they’d be able to build a career with Amazon Games. I guess the moral here is to avoid working for a large company if at all possible. They don’t care about anything, not the products they make nor the employees they bring on to make them.

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What’s your take on this? Are you happy to see Amazon bow out of the gaming business?

Image grabbed from the Amazon Games home page