Amazon licenses dozens of employees in a little-known video game studio

Amazon recently fired dozens of employees from Amazon Game Studios, the company's internal video game development company.

According to a report by Jason Schreier of Kotaku, employees affected by the layoffs were informed that they had 60 days left to look for another job at Amazon. An Amazon employee affected by the layoffs told Kotaku that people who would not find a new job within the next two months will receive severance pay at the time of their departure from the company.

Kotaku has reported that several upcoming titles from Amazon Game Studios have also been canceled as a result of the layoffs.

Amazon Game Studios was founded in 2012 but has only published a handful of games. Until now, all studio outputs have been designed for mobile devices with one exception – "The Grand Tour Game" on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, based on the original Amazon Prime series of the same name.

Earlier this year, Amazon Game Studios shared the preliminary version of a new PC game called "New World", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that allows players to create their own colonies. "New World" is one of three PC games announced by Amazon Game Studios in 2016, with "Crucible", a Fortnite style battle-style game, and "Breakaway", an arena game. online fight canceled since.

"New World" / Amazon Game Studios

Read more: The first major video game of Amazon is a huge online role-playing game on colonization

A spokesman for Amazon confirmed the layoffs in Kotaku and sent the following statement to Business Insider.

Amazon Game Studios is reorganizing some of its teams to allow us to prioritize the development of New World, Crucible and new unannounced projects that we are excited to reveal in the future. These changes are the result of regular business planning cycles in which we align resources with long-term evolving priorities. We work closely with all employees involved with these changes to help them find new roles within Amazon. Amazon is deeply engaged in gaming and continues to invest heavily in Amazon gaming studios, Twitch, Twitch Prime, AWS, our retail activities and other areas within Amazon.

Read the original report in Kotaku.