Amazon Game Studios is an American company that makes video games. It is part of Amazon, a large online retail company. The company mainly makes and releases video games that are created by teams working inside Amazon.

History

In 2011, Amazon opened the Amazon Appstore and began hiring developers to create social mobile games. In 2012, Amazon Game Studios released Living Classics, a social game for Facebook. It also published third-party games for the Fire Phone, such as Lost Within, Til Morning's Light, and To-Fu Fury.

Amazon first announced plans to create computer games in 2014. It hired Kim Swift (known for Portal), Clint Hocking (known for Far Cry 2), and developers who previously worked on System Shock 2. Amazon aimed to make games that were not too small or too large, focusing on teams of five to thirty people. These teams worked on games for one to eighteen months, with an emphasis on "creativity" and "craftsmanship," regardless of whether the games were for children or adult players. Studio vice-president Mike Frazzini wanted to create games similar to Minecraft, The Walking Dead, and The Room. The studio also wanted developers to influence the design of Amazon's hardware and cloud services. For example, developers could use Amazon's cloud services to reduce processing demands, and the Amazon Fire TV had more memory due to feedback from developers. Many developers left within a year of the studio's founding. Amazon Game Studios later published mobile games, including the horror game Lost Within.

Two years after its initial announcement, in September 2016 at TwitchCon, the studio revealed its first three PC games: Breakaway, Crucible, and New World. Breakaway was a team-based brawler where two teams of four players competed to deliver a ball to the opponent's goal. It was designed to work closely with Twitch, a streaming service Amazon acquired in 2014. Amazon Game Studios canceled Breakaway in March 2018. Crucible was a 12-player, class-based game where players competed to be the last one standing. It launched in May 2020 but was canceled later that year due to challenges in sustaining its future. New World is a massive multiplayer sandbox game set in a supernatural version of colonial United States. Players can build settlements, fight each other, or battle monsters. Crucible launched on May 20, 2020, while New World was released on September 28, 2021, after two delays. In August 2018, Christoph Hartmann, co-founder of 2K Games, became the new Vice President of Amazon Game Studios under Mike Frazzini.

In June 2019, during E3 week, Amazon announced layoffs, though the number of affected employees was not disclosed. Multiple unannounced projects were canceled. Amazon had been working on a The Lord of the Rings MMO with Leyou since mid-2019. However, in April 2021, after Tencent acquired Leyou in December 2020, legal disputes led Amazon to cancel the game.

Amazon has three game development studios in San Diego, Seattle, and Orange County. In March 2021, Amazon opened a new studio in Montreal, Quebec, led by former members of Ubisoft Montreal who worked on Rainbow Six: Siege. In October 2021, a leak of Twitch's source code revealed Amazon Games was developing a competitor to Steam, codenamed "Vapor." New World launched on September 28, 2021, and reached 707,000 concurrent players at its peak.

Lost Ark is a massive multiplayer online action role-playing game (MMOARPG) developed by Tripod Studio and Smilegate RPG. It was fully released in South Korea on December 4, 2018, and in North America, South America, and Europe on February 11, 2022, by Amazon Games. Within 24 hours of its release, it became the second most played game on Steam.

On September 22, 2021, Amazon Games announced it would publish a new title from Glowmade, a studio based in Guildford, England, with staff from Lionhead Studios. The game will focus on online cooperative play. In March 2022, Mike Frazzini stepped down as studio head. In April 2023, Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann informed staff about layoffs affecting about 100 employees in its video games division. In November 2023, Amazon eliminated over 180 employees, closing the Crown Twitch channel and the Game Growth team to focus on Prime Gaming benefits. In May 2024, Amazon Games opened its first European studio in Bucharest.

In October 2025, Amazon reduced its workforce by about 14,000 employees, including major cuts in Amazon Games, as reported by Jason Schreier of Bloomberg News. These cuts forced the division to pause work on large projects like New World, shutting down its servers in 2026, and focus on Luna and the publishing division. In December 2025, Amazon sold its Montreal studio and the game March of Giants to Ubisoft. In January 2026, Christoph Hartmann was laid off as part of broader company-wide cuts.

Amazon Games application

Since 2019, the company has provided a Microsoft Windows launcher program called Amazon Games. This program helps users install games received through Prime Gaming.