It has been revealed that Twitch – the streaming platform owned by Amazon – is set to lay off a whopping 500 employees, which is around 35% of the firm’s entire employee base. This is the third round of redundancies at the company, bringing the total number of Twitch employees hit by these layoffs to almost 1000 in the space of just twelve months.
This news follows the shutdown of Twitch’s operations in South Korea amid rising bandwidth costs in the region and more than a few controversial topics centred on the Twitch leadership team and the company’s seemingly consistent ability to upset users.
Round Three Commences
In a report published by Bloomberg, it was stressed that up to 500 employees will lose their jobs at Twitch in ongoing restructuring efforts. This comes following the departure of several high-ranking employees who have since moved on to what could be described as greener pastures.
In the last year or so, there has been a global downturn in the number of users consuming streamed content, and certain trends and scandals have laid waste to Twitch as a platform. For instance, the ‘adult content’ controversies, the rise of Kick.com as a disruptive competitor, and changes to Twitch’s partner and revenue programs.
Reportedly, Twitch remains ‘unprofitable’ almost a decade after it was acquired by Amazon, which paid almost a billion dollars for the platform in 2014. Twitch might be a streaming-based tech titan, but a lot of what it offers is available to consume for free, both as a streamer and a viewer, which means there are precious few revenue streams to make the platform profitable, even today.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Abby has officially been cast for The Last of Us’ season two
