One in three will go: Twitch is about to lay off almost 35% of the workforce

Out of three people working on Amazon's Twitch, there will soon be just two.

The world's most popular live streaming platform is set to cut 35% of its workforce, or around 500 workers in total. That's what the insiders said Bloomberg on the latest in a series of job cuts in this country.

In 2022, Amazon launched its own job-cutting party, which affected some 27,000 positions across the company and parallels with the “Red Wedding” episode of “Game of Thrones” have been established.

In 2023, there were not one, but two rounds of layoffs at Twitch – almost 400 positions were eliminated.

With the 500 scalps that Twitch is set to win in 2024 (if this is the only wave of layoffs for the entire year), the number is closer to 1,000 employees laid off.

According to anonymous sources, the reductions could be announced “as early as Wednesday”, that is to say today. They come amid concerns about losses at Twitch and after several top executives left the company in the span of a few months. A Twitch spokesperson declined to comment for Bloomberg.

Operating a massive platform (pronounced: “yuge”) that supports 1.8 billion hours of live video content per month is extremely expensive, company executives said.

For example, in South Korea, Twitch will cease operations in February. “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,” indicated a few weeks ago a official note from the streaming giant.

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. Twitch has tried to balance things out and reduce costs somewhat, introducing various solutions such as adjusting the maximum video quality to 720p, but that apparently isn't enough.

In the final months of 2023, several senior 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 in Amazon's Ads unit.