Amazon Games boss Mike Frazzini is stepping down

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According to a report, Mike Frazzini is stepping down from his role at Amazon Games to focus on his family. Frazzini has been involved in the building of the company's game studio.

Ryan Jones, an Amazon spokesman, said in a statement that Mike was at the beginning of Amazon Games and helped build the business from the ground up. We wish Mike the best, and are very grateful for his contributions.

Amazon didn't reply immediately to the request for comment.

According to a report released last year, Frazzini, who began his career at Amazon running the books section of the marketplace, lacked experience with games and often rejected the advice of the developers he hired. The report claims Frazzini would understaff projects and have developers that would end up being failures, like Intensity and Nova, that never made it out of the game.

These weren't the only games Amazon faced challenges with. The Grand Tour, a racing title based on a show of the same name, was pulled in 2020 due to poor reception. The studio canceled the game after releasing it and then put it back into a closed alpha. Andy Jassy wrote an email to staff members last year, saying that he believed they would if they stayed.

The launch of New World was delayed multiple times before it finally went live in September of 2021. Lost Ark, a free-to-play game, was initially only available in South Korea. Lost Ark became the second most played game on Steam after it was translated into English.