Amazon announced this week the opening of a new Austin office to expand their Amazon Lumberyard team, which is developing the company's free, cross-platform game engine.
The current Seattle-based Lumberyard team began work on the 3D gaming system about two years ago, following April 2015 announcements of Amazon’s purchase licensing rights for CryEngine, a German-based game engine, for about $50 to $70 million.
The CryEngine purchase came after Amazon’s $970 million buyout of Twitch, a popular live video-game streaming site, in August of 2014. At the time, the deal — which came as a bit of a surprise — was met with a mixture of bemusement and speculation.
Now, it's a bit clearer why Amazon made the two big 2014 and 2015 investments: the rollout of Lumberyard helps game developers better reach the masses. Developers can host and build their games on Amazon Web Services (AWS), then stream content live and engage gaming fans via Twitch.
This week's announcement marks Austin’s second Amazon gaming office, following last July’s arrival of a Twitch-dedicated team that settled in an office in South Austin. That's in addition to its corporate office at the Domain, which opened in 2015.
"We believe Austin is a perfect location for us to continue our quest to help game developers build the community-driven games that push both engine and cloud technology,” said J.C. Connors, Sr. leader, Amazon Lumberyard, in a statement. “From the early days of Ultima Online, to some of today’s most beloved MMOs, Austin game teams have helped lead the industry in large-scale, multiplayer experiences.”
The local Lumberyard team will be hiring and currently has 10 open positions, including product manager, software development manager, engineering, technical artists and quality assurance manager roles.
Image provided by Amazon Lumberyard.
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