Amazon.com Inc.’s (Amazon’s) gaming division has been impacted by massive company-wide layoffs, which have made thousands of roles across the company redundant. According to Amazon executives, the layoffs were an attempt to limit bureaucracy and replace some roles with generative artificial-intelligence (AI) automation. In order to increase the stability of the company, Amazon Games is cancelling development on their game New World and centering their focus on smaller, AI-centric projects.

According to a report by Reuters, over 30,000 employees are going to be laid off by Amazon, with a report by Bloomberg confirming that around 14,000 of the redundant roles belong to Amazon’s corporate sphere. The exact number of impacted employees from Amazon’s gaming division is unclear, but another report from Bloomberg confirms that “significant role reductions” are set to impact Amazon Games’ publishing division and two offices in Southern California. These two offices are located in Irvine and San Diego.

In a blog post, Beth Gelleti, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of People and Technology, describes the motivations behind the layoffs. According to her, Amazon’s layoffs are not due to financial strain, as the company is “delivering great customer experiences every day, innovating at a rapid rate, and producing strong business results.” Instead, the widespread layoffs are set to “further [reduce] bureaucracy, [remove] layers, and [shift] resources to ensure we’re investing in…what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.” 

Gelleti also attributes the layoffs to company implementation of AI. Gelleti states that “the world is changing” due to advancements in AI technology, allowing companies to “innovate much faster than ever before.” These comments regarding AI match up with previous comments by Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy, who stated in June that Amazon expects to “reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

Amazon’s layoffs and more AI-centric approach will be impacting Amazon Games’ operations moving forward. As a result of the layoffs, the development of the company’s multiplayer-online RPG New World is officially coming to an end. The game’s servers will be operational throughout 2026, but it will not receive any updates after the recently released Season 10: Nighthaven. The report by Bloomberg also references a memo by Steve Boom, Vice President of Audio, Twitch, and Games, in which he states that Amazon Games was going to transition from producing MMOs like New World to “casual and AI-focused games” for Amazon’s Luna cloud program. 

It is currently unclear how many Amazon Games employees have been impacted by the layoffs or how many redundant roles will be substituted with AI. It is clear, however, that Amazon Games will ramp up the usage of AI in their products moving forward.