Amazon News: Dozens Of Developers Laid Off From Game Studios During E3

The gaming website Kotaku reported Friday that Amazon (AMZN) laid off dozens of employees from Amazon Game Studios during the E3 gaming event in Los Angeles. The employees were given 60 days to find new jobs within the company or receive severance packages.

In response to an email inquiry from Kotaku, Amazon claims that it's "reorganizing" some of its teams. "These moves are the result of regular business planning cycles where we align resources to match evolving, long-range priorities," the company said.

The company will focus on developing two of its upcoming games, New World and Crucible. New World is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) where players colonize territory as part of an empire. Crucible features aliens and humans fighting against each other.

The layoffs come as Amazon Game Studios faces new competition aside from typical gaming competitors such as Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

Google (GOOG) is introducing the Stadia, a cloud gaming service to be launched in November, which will allow games to stream on Google Chrome. Apple (AAPL) is also going to release a mobile gaming service later this year called Apple Arcade, which the company calls "a gaming service unlike any other."

Amazon first announced that it would develop computer games in 2014. The company faced trouble, however, when it announced that its first game, mythological sports brawler Breakaway, was canceled in 2018.

Amazon Game Studios' three main studios are located in Seattle, San Diego and Irvine, California