Amazon Game Studios (formerlyAmazon Games) is an American video game company and division of the online retailing companyAmazon that primarily focuses on publishingvideo games developed within the company's development divisions.
In 2011,Amazon opened theAmazon Appstore[6] and started to hire developers for social mobile games.[7] In 2012, Amazon Game Studios released Living Classics, a social game for Facebook.[8] It published third-party games for theFire Phone, like Lost Within and Til Morning's Light and To-Fu Fury.[9]
Amazon first announced that it would create computer games in 2014.[10] Amazon recruitedKim Swift (Portal, who has since left forXbox Game Studios),Clint Hocking (Far Cry 2), and developers who previously worked onSystem Shock 2. Amazon sought to make games in-between the industry standards of small and large teams making casual and AAA games, respectively. Amazon Game Studios wanted to make teams of five to thirty people who would work on games for between a year and 18 months with a focus on "creativity" and "craftsmanship", whether the genre is for children or hardcore gamers. Studio vice-president Mike Frazzini wanted to make projects likeMinecraft,The Walking Dead, andThe Room. The studio also wanted developers to impact the direction of their hardware, between its cloud services and Amazon-brand devices. For example, developers can offload processing to Amazon's cloud services and theAmazon Fire TV has expanded memory as a result of developer feedback.[11] A lot of the company's developers left within a year of the company's founding. Amazon Game Studios went on to publish a number of mobile titles, including the horror gameLost Within.[12]
Two years after the studio's initial announcement, at the September 2016TwitchCon, the studio revealed its first three PC games:Breakaway,Crucible, andNew World.[10][13]Breakaway was a team-basedbrawler in which two teams of four fight to deliver a ball to their opponents' goal. It was designed for tight integration intoTwitch, the streaming service Amazon acquired in 2014.[10] Amazon Game Studios announced the cancellation ofBreakaway in March 2018.[14]Crucible was a 12-player, class-based game in which players competed to become thelast man standing.Crucible was launched in May 2020, but also cancelled later that year, with Relentless Studios citing "inability to see a sustained future" as the cause.New World is amassively multiplayer sandbox game with a supernaturalcolonial United States theme. Players can form settlements, fight each other, or fight monsters out in the world.[13] Crucible launched on May 20, 2020, while New World was released on September 28, 2021, after a 2nd pushback date was announced on July 10, 2020, and a 3rd on August 31, 2021. In August 2018,Christoph Hartmann, co-founder of video game publisher2K Games – a wholly owned subsidiary ofTake-Two Interactive – became the new Vice President of Amazon Game Studios working under Mike Frazzini.
In June 2019, duringE3 week it was announced that layoffs hit the company. At this time it was unknown how many people were impacted. However, "multiple" unannounced projects had been cancelled.[15] The company had been involved with aThe Lord of the RingsMMO withLeyou since the middle of 2019.[16] However, in April 2021, followingTencent's purchase of Leyou in December 2020, contractual disputes between Amazon and Tencent led Amazon to cancel further development of the game.[17]
The company has three game development studios in San Diego,[18] Seattle,[19] and Orange County.[20][21][22] In March 2021, Amazon opened a new development studio inMontreal, Quebec, led by former members ofUbisoft Montreal behindRainbow Six: Siege, Luc Bouchard, Xavier Marquis, Alexandre Remy, and Romain Rimokh.[23] During a major leak ofTwitch's source code in October 2021, it was revealed that Amazon Games was working on a competitor toSteam, codenamed "Vapor".[24] New World launched on September 28, 2021, reaching 707,000 concurrent players at its peak on launch day.[25]
Lost Ark is amassively multiplayer onlineaction role-playinggame (MMOARPG) developed by Tripod Studio andSmilegate's game development subsidiarySmilegate RPG. It was fully released in theKorean region on December 4, 2018. The game was also released in North America, South America, and Europe on February 11, 2022 by Amazon Games. Within twenty-four hours of release, it became the second most played game on Steam.[26]
On September 22, 2021, Amazon Games announced it will publish a new title from game developer Glowmade. Based in Guildford, England, Glowmade’s staff includes veterans ofLionhead Studios. This game for Amazon will be a new IP focusing on online cooperative play.[27] In March 2022, studio head Mike Frazzini stepped down.[28] In April 2023, Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann wrote a memo to staff about laying off roughly 100 employees across its video games division.[29] In November 2023, Amazon eliminated over 180 employees, resulting in the shuttering of the Crown Twitch channel and the closing of Amazon's Game Growth team in an effort to focus Prime Gaming benefits on free games.[30] In May 2024, Amazon Games opened its first European studio inBucharest.[31][32][33]
Amazon cut about 14,000 jobs company-wide in October 2025, including "significant role reductions" within Amazon Games, according to Jason Schreier ofBloomberg News. These cuts required the division to reduce work on its larger titles, including ending development ofNew World and turning off the servers in 2026, and focusing efforts on Luna and the publishing division.[34] The company later sold its Montreal studio and the game it was developingMarch of Giants toUbisoft in December 2025.[35] Amazon Games boss, Christoph Hartmann was exited as part of the January 2026 layoffs across the Games division as well as the company.[36]
Relentless Studios (formerlyAmazon Game Studios Seattle) is an American video development studio based inSeattle, Washington, which releasedCrucible in May 2020.[41][42][43] The company is led byLouis Castle, co-founder of developmentWestwood Studios.Crucible remained in operation until it was closed in November of the same year.[44]
Amazon Games OrangeCounty (formerlyDouble Helix Games) is an American video development studio based inIrvine, California, which releasedNew World in September 2021.
The company offers theMicrosoft Windows launcher applicationAmazon Games since 2019, which is used to install some games redeemed fromPrime Gaming.[45]
