The head of Amazon Game Studios, Christoph Hartmann, is parting ways with the company amidst layoffs that have cut around 16,000 jobs across Amazon. The move comes as Amazon winds down its gaming ambitions, shifting focus to its cloud gaming service Luna.
Hartmann’s departure was reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, on the same day as Amazon announced a massive round of layoffs that will impact around 16,000 people company-wide. The move follows a previous round of layoffs last October that cut 14,000 jobs, hitting Amazon Game Studios particularly hard as the company scaled back its AAA development projects.
Christoph Hartmann has a long history in the games industry, from working on the original Grand Theft Auto to co-founding 2K Games in the early 2000s, and he was brought on board by Amazon Games in 2018. More recently, Hartmann may be more notorious for saying that AI wouldn’t take jobs in games as they “don’t really have acting.”
