Amazon acquired livestreaming platform Twitch is set to layoff at least 500 employees, or about 35 per cent of their staff, a report by Bloomberg, quoting people familiar with the developments said. The latest layoff joins the list of job cuts in the company, as per reports.
In 2023, several top executives announced their departures, including Twitch’s chief product officer, chief customer officer and chief content officer. Twitch also lost its chief revenue officer, who worked on Twitch from within Amazon’s Ads unit.
In December, Twitch Chief Executive Officer Dan Clancy said the company would cease operations in South Korea, where the costs are “prohibitively expensive,” according to a blog post he wrote.
Twitch has increased its focus on advertising in recent years.
Nine years after Amazon’s acquisition of the company, the business remains unprofitable, as per Bloomberg.
Since he took the position in March 2023, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has been on a cross-country charm offensive to mend relations with the gaming celebrities who make a living streaming on Twitch.
Many of them chafed at Twitch’s original approach to ads, which the company reworked after criticism. Streamers have praised Clancy’s desire to listen to their concerns after years of expensive, despite Twitch’s reliance on Amazon’s infrastructure.complaints that the service was out of touch with its users.
The new chief has struggled to stem losses, however. Twitch undertook two rounds of layoffs last year, cutting over 400 positions, as part of wider job reductions at Amazon.
The online retail giant, Amazon, initiated its biggest-ever corporate job cuts in 2022, which it expanded to 27,000 positions across the company. It continued in October with a new round of cuts to its music division, which encompasses the company’.