Current and former staff say much of Amazon's struggles in gaming rest with the leadership of its gaming division, which reportedly has a budget of $500M/year
This Bloomberg report is the capstone of a year of internal dissent made public: earlier reporting traced Amazon's game failures to a structure and culture not built for creative work (Protocol's August 2020 account) and to hubris imported from success elsewhere in the company (former employees' interviews with Wired). What's new here is attribution — current and former staff point at the gaming division's own leadership, despite a reported $500M/year budget.
Days after publication, incoming CEO Andy Jassy publicly reaffirmed the games commitment in a February 1 staff email (his message to employees), signaling the profile landed at the top of the company but did not change the strategy.
First-order effects
Leadership of Amazon Game Studios faces direct accountability pressure from inside its own ranks, with staff going on record that the problem is management rather than market conditions.
Jassy was forced to address the unit's future within his first weeks as CEO-elect, making games an early test of whether his tenure tolerates underperforming bets.
Second-order effects
A $500M/year budget with little shipped output invites the same reckoning Warner Bros. Discovery later faced, where staff tied $300M in gaming writedowns to a leaderless vision (WBD's 2024 writedowns) — the template for boards tying studio losses to executive vision rather than genre luck.
Internal critics gain leverage to push restructuring over patience; Amazon's subsequent moves toward Prime-bundled free streaming games and job cuts (the November 2023 restructuring) are consistent with that pressure winning out.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, big-platform companies entering AAA development with their existing operating culture will repeatedly retrench from original blockbusters toward service-adjacent content — streaming catalogs and casual titles — where their distribution advantages matter more than studio craft.
Sustained six-figure annual budgets without hits will make games divisions inside conglomerates subject to the same ROI discipline as any other business line, ending the era of prestige-funded open-ended studio bets.
The trend: Tech giants entering AAA game development on the strength of their platforms keep colliding with creative-culture limits, converting ambitious first-party studios into trimmed-down content arms for their subscription businesses.
What a damning report. It once again shows that tech people think they intrinsically understand video games. They most certainly do not. It's true for journalists and executives alike. Hopefully Amazon will get it right soon, but this is a painful read... https://www.bloomberg.co…
Sounds like even Amazon not immune to big company-Itis. Over emphasis on culture cliches, having your best swordsmen from the last battle lead the next gunfight and such https://twitter.com/...
As a 20+ year game developer this article on Amazon's game studios is a fascinating read. They've been dumping a cool 500 million/year into their game division: https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Oh look, it's another “ideas” person with no experience focusing on the wrong things and thinking cool ideas are enough to make games. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Love to read yet another story of a dude with absolutely no experience bumbling his way into running a game studio. Love that for us. This is an embarrassing nightmare. https://twitter.com/...
“Executives initially rejected charges that New World, an Amazon game that would ask players to colonize a mythical land and murder inhabitants who bear a striking resemblance to Native Americans, was racist. They relented after Amazon hired a tribal consultant...” https://twitte…
Similar to how some decisions coming out of Twitch these days feel like nobody up there has actually watched a stream in their life. Makes sense. https://twitter.com/...
Why has Amazon failed to break into video games? Interviews with 30+ current and former employees point to one root problem: the guy in charge had never made a game before. He'd hire veteran devs... then ignore them. New investigation with @Priyasideas: https://www.bloomberg.com/…