Amazon's 14k mass layoff and New World MMO cease development
Insert Obama awarding medal to Obama meme.
Man, Amazon is really out here trying to speedrun Microsoft's layoff record for the year. Another 14,000 corporate roles have just been axed across the company, all so they can pivot to focus on 'AI'. Yeah, you can laugh. We'll get back to that particular stroke of genius later.
First, let's pour one out for their flagship MMO, New World, which is having its life support switched off after only four years. Yes, that's the very same game Jeff Bezos took a victory lap for on Twitter, praising the team for their "persistence" and hailing it as a "success".
Let's be honest, New World was the most generic, PR-safe, designed-by-a-committee-in-HR attempt at a triple-A MMO imaginable. It was a soulless checklist of features that launched big and then proceeded to haemorrhage players at a record-breaking pace. And of course they weren't making enough money from it. You only have to look at their cash shop cosmetics. Wow, another slight variation of the same dozen boring plate armours and drab robes. Your community was crying out for interesting designs, and you gave them fifty shades of beige. Any MMO player knows the real endgame is 50% fashion, not whatever corporate-safe garbage they were churning out. People just weren't going to pay for that.
So, it's no surprise New World failed. So now they're content to be a pathetic western publisher for garbage KMMOs, which they then try to sanitise and make 'corporate safe' for the delicate western sensibilities. I suppose they've earned the right, considering they're footing the entire bill for the localisation work. Genius move, Amazon. Lmao.
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Now for the biggest laugh, the grand corporate excuse for all these firings: 'AI'.
Sound familiar? Of course it does. It's the same get-out-of-jail-free card Microsoft has been playing all year. The galaxy-brain logic is this: you mismanage expensive projects into the ground for years, then you fire all the teams responsible, and this somehow allows you to pivot and become profitable in... AI? Make it makes sense. How does laying off a team in the gaming and entertainment sector suddenly transform you into a pioneer in artificial intelligence?
Leaving aside the fact that we are clearly in a massive tech bubble, let's just think about this. If every major company is firing tens of thousands of people to "focus on AI", yet not a single one of them seems to be making any real, sustainable profit from said 'AI'… who exactly is spending money on it? It seems to be a circular economy of hype where the only people getting rich are the ones selling the shovels in the gold rush. (NVIDIA).
✅ The Verdict
So here we are, with another perfect example of the GenAI bubble proving to be one of the dumbest grifts in modern history, sitting comfortably on a throne of energy waste right next to crypto and NFTs. And it's not even for the reasons people and society expected.
The real farce isn't that AI is coming for our jobs. The farce is that it has become a magical, all-purpose excuse for spectacular corporate incompetence. It's the ultimate scapegoat. Mismanaged a multi-billion dollar gaming division into the ground? Pivot to AI! Launched a flagship MMO that was dead on arrival? Fire everyone and focus on AI!
And make no mistake, this isn't just about gaming. Remember when Amazon closed all its futuristic, cashier-less Fresh stores in the UK this year? I guess that was also part of this grand 'AI' strategy too? 🤔
The real danger here isn't a rogue artificial intelligence. It's profoundly stupid, real-life executives who have found a new, two-letter word to justify their own failures while firing thousands of actual people.