Join The Club
There are a lot of ways to get laid off in the games industry—make a good game, make a bad game, start making a game that isn't exciting. Start making a game that your boss actively loves and get told to jog on, anyway. Your boss wears a hat. You know, normal and healthy stuff.
One more grim red X—the kind you put on doors during a plague—painted on the games industry bingo card is a recent report from Eurogamer, who spoke to multiple sources at Amazon Games about the ill-fated Project Trident. Said sources asked to remain anonymous, but the picture they paint is deeply grim.
For Project Trident, this mandate had come right before their original Colossus-style game was to be pitched—with one source claiming that there was a hefty implied demand (as they were the first to be told) to come up with something that hamfists AI into a videogame, or get "more than likely shut down".
Halfway through development, the deadline was lifted, and the team shuffled along to a third idea—a singleplayer game where you could talk to LLMs to fire off special moves or convince prisoners to join your cause. This thing was, according to Eurogamer's sources, close to being demonstratable, ready to show off a demo in the first half of 2026.
So, to summarise—Amazon reportedly had a team working on a game, cajoled them into making something different to appease the "more AI" graft, that team got close to making something it could show off, and then everybody involved was laid off. I wish I could say I was shocked, but I'm just exhausted.
Obviously, the specifics are more complex—but I can't shake this eerie feeling that Amazon put this poor dev team through the wringer, only to toss out the work they'd put in at the wringer factory. Like a lot of these speculative AI projects, nobody can be said to've learnt anything and a whole lot of money was, apparently, wasted.
In a comment supplied to Eurogamer, Amazon gaming head Jeff Gattis writes: "AI was not the reason behind role reductions in Games. Those changes were the result of a strategic shift in our business and a refocus on the areas where Amazon can deliver the most value to players.
"Great games are made by talented people and we think AI should expand what's possible. We remain focused on using these technologies thoughtfully and responsibly, always guided by the creativity and judgment of our teams. We're proud of what our teams are creating, and we look forward to sharing more of what they've been building soon."
If these sources are to be believed, I don't know if Amazon can be said to've been "guided by the creativity and judgement of our teams". The picture painted looks like quite the opposite, but hey—I'm not a top executive at Amazon, so I don't have the industry wondercraft and mental prowess to think I could compete with Steam.
