In October 2025, developers at Amazon Game Studios found out they had lost their jobs. They were far from alone; since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, an unrelenting assault of layoffs has carved up many studios across the world. The reasons for that remain contested, from a sudden correction after the explosive growth of the pandemic, to ever-greater competition for eyeballs from the attention economy, or the simple lack of ‘growth narrative’, leading to crucial investors taking their money elsewhere. Regardless, at Amazon Game Studios the story was the same as it was at so many others: rooms of creatives, junior and senior, unceremoniously brought into meetings and locked out from company accounts. The mournful leitmotif of the times.
