Amazon's Twitch cuts more than 500 jobs attempting to turn expensive platform profitable

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitch, the video game streaming platform acquired by Amazon a decade ago for close to USD 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 organisation 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 USD 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 acro