After Amazon went through a mass layoff in October 2025, which saw 14,000+ people lose their jobs, and resulted in significant cuts to Amazon Game Studios (AGS) with the shuttering of New World Aeternum and the cancellation of an upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO, the company has confirmed it will suffer yet another mass layoff, with 16,000+ people being cut this time. While it’s unclear if AGS is getting hit again, a new Bloomberg report indicates that the head of AGS, Christoph Hartmann, has left the company.
The layoff, first reported by Reuters, is said to be impacting Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video, and human resources divisions, and not AGS. It’s also reportedly a result of Amazon leaning further towards AI technology in an attempt to push for more efficiency.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier broke the news in a short post on his personal Bluesky account, noting it as yet another indication of Amazon moving away from its previous strategy of developing and publishing PC and console games and shifting its focus towards cloud services like Amazon Luna.
Hartmann has yet to directly acknowledge his departure, though the wording from Schreier’s post does seem to indicate that he made the decision to leave amidst the restructuring, rather than being laid off. Hartmann initially joined AGS in 2018 and led the division throughout his tenure with the company.
Prior to joining Amazon, he was the founder of 2K Games, making his move to join Amazon when he did a significant sign that the company was trying to acquire top industry leaders with proven success records to build this new chapter for the company, and help pave their path into the video game industry.
Now, nearly eight years later, it seems like Amazon has a very different plan for how it wants its presence to be felt in video games. Back in October 2025, at the beginning of the month and ahead of its last mass layoff being announced, the company revealed a refresh for its Amazon Luna cloud services, even calling it a “re-launch,” as it would begin to offer an original collection of AI-powered games along with popular third-party titles like Hogwarts Legacy and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
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