Korean streamers to wave goodbye to Twitch on February 27, 2024, as it shuts down due to high costs،
Twitch will cease operations in Korea (South Korea, not North Korea, duh!) early next year.
After several years of consideration and effort to find a way to continue operating in Korea, Twitch has decided to end its operations in Korea effective February 27, 2024 Korean time.
This is what a official blog post from Twitch reads, upsetting many Korean streamers just days before Christmas.
“We deeply understand that this decision is very disappointing news for Korean streamers who have invested a lot of time and effort in building their communities on Twitch and who rely on Twitch for their livelihood,” the post continues and explains why they had to come to this decision.
What happened?
The Amazon-owned streaming platform says it has suffered “significant losses” due to high local costs. The company specifically highlighted the high network fees in the country. Korea has introduced legislation that would force major content providers to pay to use the country's networks (via Android Authority).
Twitch has tried to balance things out and reduce costs somewhat, by introducing various solutions such as adjusting the maximum video quality to 720p, but that apparently isn't enough:
“The cost of operating Twitch in Korea is currently prohibitive. We have put a lot of effort into finding ways to continue operating in Korea while reducing costs. First, we introduced and tested the P2P model regarding source quality, and then adjusted the maximum video quality to 720p. Although these efforts reduced costs somewhat, network fees in Korea were 10 times higher than in most other countries, making operations impossible. As a result, Twitch continued to operate with difficulty in Korea with significant losses, but reached a situation where it could no longer find a way to continue its activities,” the company explains.
What will change after February 27, 2024?
As Twitch stated, operations in Korea are expected to end on February 27, 2024, after which “Korean viewers will no longer be able to purchase Twitch's paid products and streamers will no longer be able to generate revenue through Twitch.”
