Twitch To Lay Off 35 Percent Of Staff – Report

Amazon-owned game streaming service Twitch is reportedly about to lay off a large number of its workforce, in more bad news on the jobs front in 2024.

Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the plans, reported that Amazon’s Twitch is posed to cut 500 employees, or approximately 35 percent of the workforce. It comes after two rounds of layoffs in 2023.

Amazon had acquired Twitch for $970 million back in 2014. Twitch allows people to watch streams of video-game play. Google’s YouTube had also been in the hunt to acquire the livestreaming site a decade ago.

Job cuts

The job cuts are, according to Bloomberg, expected to announced as soon as Wednesday, and comes amid ongoing losses at Twitch.

Indeed, Twitch has reportedly remained unprofitable nine years after Amazon’s acquisition, despite a surge in users during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

There was no official confirmation of the job losses from the company, at the time of writing this report.

Bloomberg also reported that several top executives had left Twitch in the span of a few months.

A Twitch spokesperson reportedly declined to comment.

It comes after Twitch CEO Dan Clancy had revealed in a December blog post that it would shut down operations in South Korea on 27 February 2024, due to “prohibitively expensive” network fees and high operating costs.

That move was significant, as South Korea is major eSports market.

“Ultimately, the cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive and we have spent significant effort working to reduce these costs so that we could find a way for the Twitch business to remain in Korea,” wrote Clancy at the time.

2023 job losses

It should be remembered that Twitch has already undergone job losses in 2023.

The site laid off more than 400 employees in March 2023 after its user and revenue growth did not meet expectations.

Another tranche job losses occurred when Amazon shut down its Crown channel and Game Growth group, resulting in 180 job losses.

In June 2023 Twitch said it was “removing” new advertising rules that had caused an outcry amongst gamers.

Twitch’s new rules would have prohibited ads displayed persistently in video streams, including video, display and audio ads.

Such ads are a major source of revenue for streamers.