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

The world’s most popular livestream platform is about to cut 35% of its workforce, or in total – about 500 workers. That’s what insiders have told Bloomberg about the latest in a series of job downsizing there.

In 2022, Amazon initiated its own job-cutting fiesta, which affected some 27,000 positions across the company and parallels with the “Red Wedding” episode from “Game of Thrones” were drawn.

In 2023, there were not one, but two rounds of layoffs over at Twitch – nearly 400 positions were slashed.

With the 500 scalps Twitch is about to take in 2024 (if that’s the only round of layoffs for the whole year), the number is getting close to a thousand dismissed employees.

Per the unnamed insiders, the cuts could be announced “as soon as Wednesday”, meaning today. They come amid concerns over 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 huge (pronounced: “yuge”) platform that supports 1.8 billion hours of live video content a month is enormously expensive, company executives have said.

For example, in South Korea, Twitch will be ceasing its operations this 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 as of February 27, 2024, Korean time”, said an official note from the streaming giant some weeks ago.

The Amazon-owned streaming platform says it has been operating at “significant losses” because of high local costs. The company specifically pointed to the high network fees in the country. Korea introduced legislation that would force major content providers to pay to use networks in the country. Twitch has tried to balance things out and somewhat reduce costs, introducing various solutions such as adjusting the maximum video quality to 720p, but that’s apparently not enough.

In the final months of 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.