Amazon is cutting a total of 14,000 jobs, and Twitch is affected as well. A former Twitch chief expresses harsh criticism of the plans.
Who is this former Twitch chief? It is Marcus Graham. He worked at Twitch from 2011 to 2022. During this time, he served as Director of Creator Development, among other roles. Under the name “djWheat,” he still streams on the platform today.
Graham commented on the massive wave of layoffs currently taking place at Amazon:
- The layoffs affect several business units of the company, including Amazon Web Services, Prime Video, and Twitch.
- A total of 14,000 administrative positions are to be eliminated, which is 4% of the entire workforce in this area.
- According to an exclusive report from Reuters, this number could rise to as many as 30,000.
The reason for these layoffs is the new course set by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. He claims to want to reduce bureaucracy and automate certain processes. For this, they intend to increasingly rely on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Employees are being replaced by “robots” or people that “don’t give a f**k”
What does Graham say about these layoffs? In a post on X (formerly Twitter), he sharply criticizes Amazon for replacing loyal and experienced employees with AI.
“For everyone who says: ‘Well, the T&S at Twitch was bad anyway, so this is good’ … here is the reality.” T&S likely refers to Twitch’s Trust & Safety team.
Graham refers to another post on X, which discusses an employee who was let go during the layoffs at Twitch. This employee had worked at Twitch for 11 years and established the fraud program that protects Twitch users from fraud.
I was the one who made sure that bad actors – who steal and abuse revenue on Twitch – were kept off the platform. Apparently, I did my job too well, because they fired me.
Tarfu on X.com
“Tarfu gave a damn,” writes Graham in his post. “For 11 years he fought on behalf of Twitch creators, viewers, and mods. That’s gone. Now it is gonna be a robot or someone who doesn’t give a fuck… and that is bad for all”
Twitch is currently facing heavy criticism from many sides. For example, there was an incident involving streamer Emiru at TwitchCon 2025 in the USA. She felt particularly “hurt and upset” regarding how Twitch and the organizers handled the situation.
The developers at Amazon Games Studios are also affected by the wave of layoffs. Now, New World, Amazon’s big MMORPG, is being discontinued. It was just doing so well. The outlook for other projects like the new Lord of the Rings MMORPG is also grim: Just as New World was performing well, Amazon is making the worst nightmare of all fans come true – what’s happening with the Lord of the Rings MMORPG?
