The logo for live-streaming video platform Twitch is seen on Nov. 4, 2017, at the Paris games week in Paris, France. Twitch is laying off more than 500 employees, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024, as the company looks to get to a more appropriate size, according to the streaming platform's CEO Dan Clancy. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)
Twitch, the video game streaming platform acquired by Amazon a decade ago for close to $1 billion, is laying off more than 500 employees as the company tries to turn the tremendously expensive division profitable.
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy in an email to employees said that even with cost cuts and growing efficiency, the platform “is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business.”
“For some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we’re at today,” Clancy wrote.
Amazon purchased Twitch Interactive in 2014 for $970 million as it looked for a way to take part in video gaming’s growth as an online spectator sport.
Twitch is a multi-channel online network built for a generation of people raised with video games and like to watch some of the best gamers in the world as many people watch professional sports.
Last month Twitch, based in San Francisco, said that it was withdrawing from the South Korean market due to expensive network fees. Clancy said at the time that the network fees the company has been paying to South Korean internet operators were 10 times more than in most other markets. He did not provide specific numbers to back such claims.
“As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible," Clancy wrote. “Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch.”
Amazon has cut thousands of jobs after a hiring surge during the pandemic. In March, Amazon announced that it planned to lay off 9,000 employees. That was on top of the 18,000 employees the tech giant said that it would lay off in January 2023.
Job cuts are occurring elsewhere in the company this week.
Amazon is cutting several hundred positions across its Prime Video and MGM Studios unit. Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said in a note to employees that the company is boosting investment in areas with the most impact, while stepping back from others.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Jeff Benedict, author of 'The Dynasty,' weighs in on the Kansas City Chiefs being the next big dynasty, who he thinks will win Super Bowl LIX and more. Watch!
