Amazon Digital Games biz dev veteran Dan Winters dies from cancer (updated)

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
November 1, 2018
Updated June 19, 2025
2 min

Dan Winters, head of business development for Amazon Digital Games and a former professional baseball player, has died from cancer.

Winters was mourned on social media by many in the game industry. He worked at Amazon for nearly four years, helping it build its fledgling games business. Among the things he did was promote Amazon services such as its Lumberyard game engine. [Update: You can make a donation on Winters’ behalf to a GoFundMe for the Institute of Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research (IMBCR)].

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.