For the third time in the past 12 months, Twitch is laying off a significant portion of its workforce. The streaming platform is letting go of approximately 500 staffers, according to a Bloomberg report.
The Bloomberg report, which cited “people familiar with the plans,” claimed that the layoffs will affect 35% of Twitch employees. A spokesperson for the Amazon-owned hub declined to comment on the news.
Twitch is looking to looking to rebound from a difficult 2023 filled with executive departures, flubbed policy updates, and increased competition from upstart rival Kick. Longtime CEO Emmett Shear left his post in March, and his successor Dan Clancy has since faced a slew of difficult decisions. About 400 Twitch staffers lost their jobs as part of a large round of Amazon cuts, and another group of employees received pink slips just before the start of TwitchCon in October. Most recently, Clancy announced Twitch’s plan to pull out of South Korea, where “prohibitively expensive” operating costs were hindering the platform’s operations.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
The latest round of layoffs is hitting Twitch in the wake of several more high-level executive changes. Chief Revenue Officer Walker Jacobs left Twitch to take a similar role at sports streamer DAZN, while Shear briefly served as the CEO of OpenAI before Sam Altman was reinstated as the head of the ChatGPT parent company.
Twitch is not the only Amazon-owned property to fall on hard times. On the same day Bloomberg revealed the incoming layoffs, Amazon exec Mike Hopkins told staffers at Prime Video and MGM Studios that hundreds of them would be shown the door. According to tracking tool layoffs.fyi, Amazon has gone through nine rounds of cuts since November 2022.
Despite the turmoil at Twitch, the platform still has a major influence on creator culture. Record-breaking broadcaster Kai Cenat was Twitch’s top streamer in 2023, and the recent decision to lift a ban on simulcasting allows creators to better connect their Twitch profiles with the other parts of their digital portfolios.
