“This is an American way” – Twitch shutting down its operation in South Korea is making Korean streamers furious

Korean streamers in a frenzy after Twitch shuts down its operations in South Korea due to high operational costs

“This is an American way” – Twitch shutting down its operation in South Korea is making Korean streamers furious

Twitch is one of the biggest streaming platforms in the world. Twitch has found mainstream success in countries like the USA, Japan, and South Korea, which have colossal gaming cultures. However, it seems that the platform might soon stop functioning in one of these countries. The streaming platform has announced that it will quickly shut down South Korean operations.

The Amazon-owned platform announced that it had to shut down operations in the country due to the high costs of maintaining the platform. South Korean fees are nearly ten times higher than most other countries. They made several attempts to reduce the operating cost. However, the network fee made it impractical for Twitch to operate further.

YouTube video

Twitch initially tried the P2P model in terms of source quality. However, the experiment was unsuccessful. They also tried to cap the maximum video quality to 720p to reduce video streaming costs. Still, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy announced that the costs were still too high and that the platform would stop operations in South Korea as of February 2024.

This has caused a massive outrage among the Korean gaming community. Fans are upset that they can no longer watch their favorite streamers on the Amazon-owned platform. However, streamers seem to be much more upset by this news.

Korean streamers outraged at Twitch

Korean streamer yummy_2 commented on the situation with much anger in her voice. She claimed she had lost her job and career due to this decision. As most of her audience is made up of English viewers, she said that she had only two options: move to another platform or to another country. Even if she moved to another country, she would have to create a new channel and get a partnership for it.

Twitch Shutdown South korea (1)
Image via: Instagram/@twitch_yummy_2

“This is an American firing then. Yeah, this is an American way. Like literally, ‘Oh, so, like, if you’re giving us, like, six months before, so, you’re going to get lazy, and then not trying to take over another way. So, we give you two months before.’ And then, what he said was, ‘Okay, we’re going to try to help the Korean streamers by letting them move to AfreecaTV and YouTube.’ Seriously?!”

yummy_2

The Korean streamer added that the platform had fired Korean streamers in the Korean way. She said that streamers in the country had only been given this news two months before the situation. She also said that Twitch’s claim to help Korean streamers move to other platforms like AfreecaTV or YouTube Gaming seemed ignorant on their part.

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