Bloomberg (opens in new tab) reports that Amazon has laid off roughly 100 employees in the latest in a series of severe cutbacks taking place at the company. All of the affected employees are part of Amazon's gaming division and are spread across the company's San Diego gaming studios, Prime Gaming and Game Growth (opens in new tab).

Executives are trying to sell this as a reorganization rather than a reduction in staff; Christoph Hartmann, vice president of Amazon Games, told employees that the company's resources will be adjusted to support a "focus on content" and that investment in "internal development efforts" will Hartmann even said that the company's team will "continue to grow" as the Amazon Games project moves forward.

Meanwhile, Hartmann said that employees who survived the layoffs will "double down" on projects yet to be announced, and Amazon's Montreal studio will also expand by working on another unannounced project, although Hartmann did not specify the amount. would be expanded by working on another unannounced project, although Hartmann did not specify how much. Amazon will also continue to pursue expansion of its third-party publishing activities (which makes sense, given the success of "The Lost Ark" (opens in new tab)).

Other than New World (opens in new tab), Amazon has yet to release an actual internally developed game. This underwhelming colonial MMO saw an incredible number of players (opens in new tab) at launch, but proved unable to keep them. However, that track record did not seem to influence Amazon's decision, and Hartmann told staff that the game's Irvine-based development team would also continue to grow.

Amazon has continued its rapid growth this year, announcing 18,000 layoffs (open in new tab) in January and another 9,000 (including 400 on Twitch (open in new tab)) in March.

The layoffs stem from Amazon's attempts to downsize its operations after mass hiring during the pandemic. Meta (open in new tab), Google (open in new tab), Microsoft (open in new tab), and now even Apple (open in new tab) are doing the same thing, and employees have to bask in the backlash of hiring decisions made years ago. Still, shareholders are happy: according to Bloomberg, Amazon's stock price rose 0.9% to $103.29 on the day the layoffs were announced.