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Amazon Lays Off 180 Employees in Its Games Division
- digdugdirk 3y agoI haven't even heard of the divisions people were laid off from. Does anyone have any background information about what these groups were attempting to accomplish?
- frabcus 3y agoNot sure, but I remember clearly this Simon Wardley (of Wardley mapping) blogpost from 2016, which thinks Amazon's Lumberyard will kill Unity and Unreal (amongst others) by doing their normal Amazon play for game development. https://blog.gardeviance.org/2016/02/what-to-do-about-amazon-and-gaming.html https://blog.gardeviance.org/2016/02/what-to-do-about-amazon... That didn't happen - these predictions and strategies don't always work.
- upon_drumhead 3y agoI feel that Amazon absolutely was positioned to do exactly that, but rather then have the focus and the will to make a real engine, they pivoted to a minimum viable product for a entirely run of the mill game and then was surprised when AAA studios weren't impressed with their big talk about the future. If they would have held the initial course and built a world class engine, this could have actually changed the world. But Amazon doesn't have the backbone anymore. They're afraid of making and sticking with the big bets. In a decade, I don't know that Amazon will be seen any differently then Google is today.
- caffeinewriter 3y agoTangentially related, I just recently found out that Lumberyard actually was spun out[1] into the open source Open 3D Engine[2] under the stewardship of the Linux Foundation. It's a nice surprise to see that Lumberyard didn't just die out, and is joining the ranks of open-source engines. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220614090421/https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220614090421/https://aws.amazo... [2]: https://o3de.org/ https://o3de.org/
- rileyphone 3y agoPrime Gaming was primarily providing in-game content for Prime members in games like GTA 5, as well as monthly free games. There were efforts to turn it in to a publishing arm like Netflix is doing but as far as I know they have been shuttered.
- jarjar2_ 3y agoI think they've found their sweet spot as a publisher rather than a development house. It's hard to make successful games, and just throwing large sums of money and people at a problem doesn't guarantee success.
- ajyey 3y agoSee: Rings of Power
- dmvdoug 3y agoPeople say season two was better than season one but season one was so bad I can’t bring myself to watch season two.
- upon_drumhead 3y agoSeason 2 hasn’t been released yet.
- dmvdoug 3y agoHa, I was thinking of Wheel of Time series. This is what I get for commenting while on NyQuil.
- antisthenes 3y agoPublisher in this case being the middle-man abusing monopoly power, as is the end game for pretty much any company in under-regulated capitalism.
- kogus 3y agoI don't know if I have ever read a more generic, boilerplate quasi-condolence paragraph than this one: This isn’t a decision the leadership team came to quickly; it was the result of extensive considerations and road mapping for our future. We are proud of the work the teams have been doing, pushing into new areas with weekly content on Crown Channel, and finding more ways to help publishers reach new audiences with Game Growth. But after further evaluation of our businesses, it became clear that we need focus our resources and efforts to deliver great games to players now and in the future.”
- ulizzle 3y agoVery chat gtp
- petethepig 3y agoThe robotic takeover has already begun; it's just more nuanced and less obvious at this stage.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoThis comment is becoming a bit of a meme on these layoff threads. This paragraph actually seems less bullshit than many of the corporate messages around layoffs. “This was not a decision we take lightly, and we’re proud of the work these teams have accomplished, but we believe that if we are to succeed we need to take the business in a different direction.” How would you improve it?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- johnnyanmac 3y agowell for a trillion dollar company, it's kind of hard to suggest "if we are to succeed", but that's not the fault of your PR statement template. It's just plain impossible to pass off "we need to make cuts" when you make that much money.
- candiddevmike 3y ago> “We’ve listened to our customers and we know delivering free games every month is what they want most" There is a lot to unpack in this statement. I for one don't really want monthly free shit clicker games.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Communitivity 3y agoNo. We want New World to get more love, and be viable.
- iwontberude 3y agoDefinitely, it has so much promise as a foundation for even greater experiences.
- tornato7 3y agoGamers complain about a lot of stuff, but I don't know anyone complaining about a lack of quantity of video games. There are 70K games on Steam and 460K games on the app store alone.
- elromulous 3y agoIs this really news? That's about one one hundredth of a percent.
- CollinEMac 3y agoIt's a much larger percentage of their Games Division specifically. This might be a big indicator of where Amazon is headed in regard to video games.
- 83457 3y agoOf what?
- mlazos 3y agoTheir workforce
- cowboyscott 3y agoLayoffs are always a bummer, and folks in gaming have more than their share to deal with (it seems, I don't actually know how it compares with other industries). However, seeing the Crown channel go isn't a big surprise. In fact, learning that it is Amazon-produced makes its content make more sense; even as a 39 year old, the programming felt cringy in an overly-produced corporate way.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>“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" what an awful PR statement. "y'all wanted free games, so you'll get it at the cost of 200 employee's livelihoods!". Weird to use "we're listening to consumers" as a justification to screw over their own workers.
- jakobson14 3y agoPretty standard defence in the "consumer welfare" model of antitrust that developed in the 80's doesn't matter if you use your position to fuck over your suppliers and workers, so long as consumers don't see a price increase. this particular action may not be an example of trust behaviour, but amazon overall is perfectly moulded to the consumer welfare legal environment so I can see this as having that verbiage leaking through
- shortrounddev2 3y agoI think if the last few years have shown us anything, it's that tech companies aren't good at making games. They just don't know how to do it.
- disgruntledphd2 3y agoMaking games is hard. Your failure modes are the union of software and entertainment failure modes. Honestly, I find it impressive that any good games are ever made.
- nathants 3y agohold my beer.
- hughesjj 3y agoEspecially at the wage and wlb offered by the industry.
- userinanother 3y agoThat’s what makes it hard to compete.
- spacemadness 3y agoIt’s passion industry wages similar to working on special effects in Hollywood. These industries of course take advantage as much as they’re able. A lot of the pay is measured in “cool job” units.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoI think a good lesson is that when Microsoft got into gaming they had a real long term commitment and took it seriously. They put in the work to understand it. In contrast, Amazon and Google felt they could buy their way in based on a playbook that might have worked with other verticals. That unsurprisingly failed.
- 3y ago