In a mass culling of jobs, Amazon is set to reduce staff by around 14,000 in the very near future, and its gaming departments have not been spared, with the company stating that it has "made the difficult decision to halt a significant amount of [its] first-party AAA game development work."
This comes days after the company launched its Luna gaming service, which offers members free PC games each month. Steve Boom—vice president of Audio, Twitch, and Games—added that the company will be "making significant role reductions in our studios in Irvine and San Diego, as well as [its] central publishing team.”
This could very well mean the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO, currently in development, may never grace our screens. This is also after the relatively successful launches of New World Aeternum and Throne and Liberty, both of which now hold only a fraction of their peak player base on Steam.
It's unclear at this point what this might mean for the future of these established games and how they'll be impacted by the layoffs, but we can more than likely expect far less future content. It's also unclear what will become of the Tomb Raider game in development at Amazon.
What is clear is how in a public blog on the company's website, it posted an update on these events. And yes, you guessed it, AI was mentioned. How big a role AI will play in Amazon's future game development is unclear, but it definitely has a place at Amazon, judging from the blog post.
Update on Oct. 28 at 4pm CT: In light of the layoff news, New World: Aeternum has announced that it will no longer receive content updates and will effectively be shut down eventually. The recent Nighthaven release has been made free to all players, and the studio says its "intention is to keep servers operating through 2026."
The FAQ on the game's website also states that the devs will "provide a minimum of six months’ notice before making any changes that impact your ability to play New World: Aeternum."
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The post Amazon steps back from AAA development (and towards AI) amid massive round of job cuts appeared first on Destructoid.
