Twitch has officially revealed that they have to lay off over 400 of their employees to be able to keep their business afloat. In a recent blog post on the company's official website written by Dan Clancy, the new CEO of Twitch, he admitted that the company has been unable to keep up with the significant impact of the current macroeconomic environment.
Clancy also added that the user and revenue growth of the company did not reach their expectations. Thus, to be able to cut costs and sustain the business outlook in the long term, they have to reduce the size of their workforce.
Further, this revelation is in connection with the 9,000 massive layoffs across all of Amazon's divisions for the past year. Amazon is the parent company of Twitch. Way back in 2014, Twitch was bought by Amazon for $970 million to expand its platform, especially in the field of gaming, and likewise establish a relationship with Twitch's one million users ranging from gamers, publishers, creators, and esports organizations.
Twitch's CEO Has Already Stepped Down
Monday, March 20, when the CEO and co-founder of Twitch, Emmett Shear, finally decided to step down from his position after being with the company for 16 years. Shear, as indicated in the report by GameSpot.com, will now be working in an advisory role for Twitch while focusing on his family and taking care of his firstborn child.
It seems that despite resigning from his position, Shear is still devoted to venturing into a greener pasture without neglecting to extend his help to the company that he served for almost two decades.
As mentioned, the replacement of Shear as the next CEO is known to be Dan Clancy, who started working for Twitch in 2018 and has over 20 years of experience working in different technological industries. Clancy is also the previous president of Twitch and has worked side-by-side with Shear.
Related Article: 9,000 More Amazon Employees Will Be Laid Off in the Coming Weeks
The Founding of Twitch
Twitch was founded in June 2011. It is an interactive live-streaming service wherein the content mainly focuses on gaming, entertainment, music, and sports.
Over the years, Twitch has proven its mission and vision by having solid partnerships with major brands and game companies as well as by becoming a dominant player in the streaming industry, as The Gamer posted. Currently, they have more than 30 million daily active users, while their monthly streamers have already reached a total of three million.
According to a principal analyst at Palo Alto-based Constellation Research named Ray Wang, as reported in the article of the Los Angeles Times, the viewership of Twitch has declined to 6% in 2022 compared to its date in 2021. The data ironically shows that regardless of the over-investing in Twitch, the company has still not been able to catch up with the demands, paving the way for the laying off of their employees
With its million global streamers, the company never forgets to give their users the best, quality service they could potentially offer. As clarified in the update of Clancy on Twitch's official website, for the sake of their streamers and communities, Twitch will always continue to inspire and grow strong while ensuring to formulate better ideas for the progress of their platform.
