Amazon to lay off hundreds from Twitch, Prime Video

Amazon will lay off several hundred employees in its streaming and studio operations, according to an internal note sent on Wednesday. The announcement came the same day as the live-streaming company Twitch, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant, disclosed that it would lay off about 35 percent of its workforce, or 500 employees.

Amazon last year cut more than 27 000 jobs as part of a wave of US tech layoffs, drawing a sharp line under the industry’s recruitment spree during the pandemic. It was far from alone. Facebook and Microsoft each laid off 10 000 workers last year; Google cut 12 000.

“We’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact,” Mike Hopkins, senior vice-president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees.

Twitch’s chief executive Dan Clancy said in a blogpost that his company had grown too large on optimism that the business would expand faster.

“We still have work to do to rightsize our company,” Clancy wrote.

“For some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in three or more years, not where we’re at today.”

Amazon has spent aggressively in recent years to bolster its media business, including the US$ 8,5bn deal for MGM and around US$ 465m on the first season of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” on Prime Video in 2022.

It is also set to roll out ads on Prime Video as well as a more expensive ad-free subscription tier in some market, similar to moves by rivals Netflix and Disney.— The Guardian