Twitch employees are worried about a new wave of layoffs. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the streaming service is still not profitable. Under Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who has been taking a tough crackdown on unprofitable business areas, further job cuts may follow.
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The Wall Street Journal in its report also relied on Amazon’s internal documents that the business newspaper was able to see. Accordingly, the audience that actually spends a lot has paid less recently. Moreover, growth has stopped.
TV+: The offer with advertising is clearly getting closerAmazon paid nearly $1 billion to buy the then-emerging video game streaming service in 2014. A decade later, according to the WSJ, insiders fear Twitch could develop into a “zombie brand” within Amazon — like book platform Goodreads.
However, an Amazon spokesperson told the business magazine that Amazon had long-term plans for Twitch, with which they wanted to address an audience that would otherwise be difficult to reach. Amazon is also convinced of the platform’s potential.
Layoffs on Twitch
However, this perceived perception hasn’t stopped Amazon from cutting jobs at the streaming service in the past. As part of wider job cuts, 500 employees were furloughed in January – that’s the equivalent of a third of the workforce.
The company also closed the Twitch office in South Korea in February 2024. CEO Dan Clancy explained the move, saying, “Operational costs in South Korea are extremely high.” The high data tolls charged by South Korean network operators lead to significant losses.
Amazon has already cut jobs at Twitch through 2023. Among those affected was the Twitch “Trust and Safety” department – staff who can investigate and block abusive and illegal content on the platform. In the future, these functions will increasingly be taken over by external service providers and AI.
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