Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch layoffs 35% of their staff

Twitch lays off nearly 500 employees, accounting for 35% of its workforce amidst financial struggles and disappointing growth

Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch layoffs 35% of their staff

Image via: Twitch

Continuing the trend of 2023, the technology industry is seeing many employee layoffs due to automation and a weak economy. Tech giants such as Amazon, Humane, and the game development engine Unity have all fallen victim to this phenomenon. Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch is also next in line with hefty layoffs for its employees.

The platform has been performing relatively well over the past few years. Twitch claims to have over 35 million daily visitors to the platform. However, active streamers have fallen nearly 20%, going from 10 million to 8 million in the last two years. The platform has failed to retain its creators, leading to a loss in revenue. This could partially be due to rival platforms such as Kick signing their long-time creators.

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Twitch has been known to be facing financial difficulties for over nine years since Amazon acquired the company. The platform hosts 1.8 billion hours of live content monthly. This leads to huge operation costs despite them leveraging Amazon’s massive infrastructure. This is the same reason Twitch recently shut down operations in South Korea.

In addition to such financial challenges, Twitch has faced many changes in its top-level executive team. Several high-ranking executives, such as the company’s chief product officer, chief customer officer, and chief content officer, departed the company in the final months of 2023.

Twitch lays off more than 500 employees and cuts one-third of its staff

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy recently made a public statement about these layoffs. The Amazon-owned platform will be significantly reducing its workforce, planning to lay off 35% of its staff, which amounts to approximately 500 employees. He further announced that he would host a live stream on Thursday, January 12th, to address these issues.

Twitch Offices
Image via: SFGATE

This is not the first time Twitch has laid off employees in the last 12 months. In March 2023, the company let go of 400 employees as part of a massive 18,000-employee layoff by its parent company, Amazon. The reason for these layoffs was also listed as disappointing user and revenue growth. Twitch is now left with 930 employees at their disposal, nearly half of what they had at the beginning of last year.

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