The video-streaming platform, Twitch, has reportedly laid off 400 employees recently. The cuts were first reported by an X user, ‘Zach Bussey’, who revealed that this round of job cuts was smaller than the one in March.
Earlier, the company laid off over 400 employees when its parent company, Amazon let go of 9,000 staff members during its March job cuts. It is suggested that the recent job cuts were limited to the company’s customer-experience department. The company is said to be considering outsourcing these responsibilities to third-party vendors instead of retaining them as in-house positions.
However, the company hasn’t confirmed these layoffs yet.
In March, Amazon laid off 400 Twitch staff members and appointed Dan Clancy as the new CEO in place of the company’s founder, Emmett Shear.
At the time, the layoffs were said to be necessary to ensure company’s long-term viability, given the increasing competition in the streaming market, including from platforms such as Kick and YouTube. However, the layoffs seem to have done little to improve the situation.
Amazon had acquired Twitch for approximately $970 million in 2014, integrating it with its Prime service.
Launched in 2011, Twitch primarily focuses on video game streaming. It quickly expanded to include a variety of content, such as music, creative arts and “IRL” (In Real Life) broadcasts. Gamers and content creators use Twitch to live-stream their gameplay or engage with viewers through chat. However, Twitch has faced challenges, including controversies related to content moderation and competition from rival platforms like YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming.
