United States: E-commerce giant Amazon is laying off approximately 180 employees from its gaming division in the latest round of job cuts.
This marks the second wave of layoffs within a week by the company as part of its broader restructuring. According to the reports, Amazon Games vice president Mr. Christoph Hartmann sent out an internal email to employees announcing the decision.
In the email, Mr. Hartmann stated that, “After our initial restructuring in April, it became clear that we needed to further concentrate our resources on the areas that are experiencing the highest potential for driving our business forward. 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.”
The latest layoffs are also the second round of layoffs in the Games Division, as the company previously laid off about 100 jobs in the games unit. As per the statement, this decision comes in the wake of job cuts in other divisions of Amazon, including the streaming music and podcast division. Furthermore, a small number of positions in the human resources unit, known as People Experience and Technology (PXT), have also been affected.
Amazon’s third-quarter net income far exceeded analyst expectations, and the company forecast revenue in the final quarter of the year to be roughly in line with expectations. However, having cut almost 27,000 positions in the last year, the company has followed a larger trend in the tech industry.