In continuing a year of brutal layoffs which have swept across nearly every branch of the company, Amazon has announced that they will be be undertaking yet another round of job cuts, the efforts this time around focused on their three core entertainment efforts of Amazon MGM Studios, Prime Video, and Twitch.
This latest news regarding the tech conglomerate’s currently shaky operational status was first revealed to each division’s workforce on January 10th courtesy of their respective executive leaders.
Addressing employees of the company’s screen division, which encompasses both Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video, Amazon Studios Vice President Mike Hopkins informed them that in seeking to “to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact”, he had made the decision to eliminate “several hundred roles” across the two organizations.
“This is a difficult decision to make and one that my leadership team and I do not take lightly. It is hard to say goodbye to talented Amazonians who’ve made meaningful contributions on behalf of our customers, team and business,” he added. “Our prioritization of initiatives that we know will move the needle, along with our continued investments in programming, marketing and product, positions our business for an even stronger future.”
Meanwhile, in a message to his own team – which is confirmed to be losing at least 500 members – Twitch CEO Dan Clancy admitted, “As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible. Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch.”
“This will be a very hard day,” said the Amazon exec. “Our service exists to empower communities to create, together, and every single one of you has played a vital role in fostering our community and furthering that mission.”
“Last year we paid out over $1 billion to streamers,” Clancy ultimately detailed. “So while the Twitch business remains strong, for some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we’re at today. As with many other companies in the tech space, we are now sizing our organization based upon the current scale of our business and conservative predictions of how we expect to grow in the future.”
As noted above, unfortunately for the company, this announcement is but the latest in a long string of downsizing moves made by Amazon in the last year.
The first such layoff effort came on January 24th, 2023 when, supposedly in light of their rising “cost[s] to serve“, Amazon announced that they would be cutting 18,000 jobs across its retail and human resources departments – including nearly 75% of its ComiXology platform’s entire staff.
Then, just three months later, the company undertook yet another workforce culling, this time to the tune of 9,000 jobs from every Amazon division.
As of writing, Amazon has provided little more than corporate jargon in regards to the reasons for these cuts.
However given the divisions affected, it’s hard not to read between the lines and make an informed guess that their recent such stumbles as allowing Twitch to become more receptive to essentially softcore pornography and the entirety of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – and let’s not forget The Wheel of Time – are finally catching up to them.
