Korean streamers to wave goodbye to Twitch on February 27, 2024, as it shuts down due to high costs

Twitch will be ceasing its operations in Korea (South Korea, not North Korea, duh!) early next year.

That’s what an official blog post from Twitch reads, upsetting many Korean streamers 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 into building their communities on Twitch and who depend on Twitch for their livelihood”, continues the post and provides an explanation of why they had to come to this decision.

What happened?

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 (via Android Authority).

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:

“The cost of running Twitch in Korea is currently prohibitively high. We have put a lot of effort into finding ways to continue operating in Korea by 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 were able to reduce costs somewhat, the network fees in Korea were 10 times higher than in most other countries, making operations no longer feasible. As a result, Twitch has continued to operate with difficulty in Korea with significant losses, but has reached a situation where it can no longer find a way to continue operations”, the company explains.

What will change after February 27, 2024?

As stated by Twitch, operations in Korea are scheduled 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”.