Twitch cuts 35% of its staff, and now more than 500 people are out of work
Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch is laying off more than 500 people in a move designed to “rightsize” the company, according to CEO Dan Clancy. Bloomberg first reported the news Tuesday, which is when many employees learned about the impending layoffs — a day before Wednesday’s official announcement.
Amazon is also laying off “several hundred” people in its Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios divisions, according to Variety.
“Today I have some incredibly difficult news to share,” Clancy wrote in a letter sent to staff on Wednesday. “As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible. 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. This will be a very hard day. Our service exists to empower communities to create, together, and every single one of you has played a vital role in fostering our community and furthering that mission.”
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The 500 job cuts come less than a year after Twitch laid off 400 people as part of a larger Amazon layoff in March. In November, Amazon Games cut almost 200 jobs and eliminated several of its games divisions. Clancy said the decision to axe such a substantial number of employees is to “build a more sustainable business.” Despite earlier cost cutting measures — like ending “prohibitively expensive” service in South Korea — Clancy said Twitch is “still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business.” He continued: “So while the Twitch business remains strong, for some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be
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