Amazon Games has announced that it’s opening a new studio in Bucharest, Romania, representing the studio’s fifth development location and its first in Europe.
Per an announcement post on the official Amazon Games website, the Bucharest studio will “focus on supporting Amazon Games’ diverse portfolio of games now and in the future”.
According to Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann, Bucharest is “one of the top emerging European cities for game development”, and the addition of a studio in the city is Amazon’s “natural next step”.
The Bucharest wing of Amazon Games will be headed up by Cristian Pana, a former Ubisoft executive with “more than 20 years of experience building video games”, according to Amazon.
He’s worked with franchises like Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s The Division, and The Crew, and he says he’s excited to join Amazon Games in order to get the chance to work on the company’s “exciting roadmap”.
As well as announcing Pana’s stewardship of Amazon Games Bucharest, Amazon also released an interview with its new studio head in which he discusses his career, his achievements, and some of the projects he’s overseen.
Pana says that the game of which he’s most proud is Tom Clancy’s The Division, where he headed up the development of post-launch content.
Amazon Games Bucharest’s creation and Pana’s appointment come after the company’s gaming division laid off around 180 employees back in November last year.
Those layoffs took place against the backdrop of a wider industry trend that has also seen companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Hasbro letting hundreds of employees go within the last year or so.
Despite that, Amazon still has a pretty stacked slate of upcoming games, with projects like Blue Protocol, an as-yet untitled Tomb Raider game, and a Lord of the Rings MMO (no, not that one) currently in the works at the company’s gaming division.
We’ll have to wait and see where Bucharest slots into Amazon’s plans. Stay tuned for more.
