Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has claimed the streaming platform isn’t profitable, following massive layoffs at the company.
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Earlier this week, Twitch announced it would be laying off 35 per cent of its workforce, with over 500 members of staff being let go. It comes after 400 workers were laid off at the start of 2023.
In a letter to staff, Clancy said, “it has become clear that our organisation is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business,” before confirming that the company had paid out over $1billion (£785million) to streamers in 2023.
“While the Twitch business remains strong, 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.”
Following the news, Clancy hosted a Twitch stream where he explained that Twitch wasn’t making a profit (via Eurogamer).
Yesterday was a difficult day for all of us here at Twitch. I am going to go live today on /Twitch at 1pm PDT to answer any questions from the community related to the layoff, any of our recent announcements, or anything else that is top of mind.https://t.co/sfT9OwmNyw
— Daniel Clancy (@djclancy999) January 11, 2024
“We’ve implied this before where we say we need to run it sustainably but I’ll be blunt: we aren’t profitable at this point,” he confirmed. “Amazon has been extremely supportive of Twitch and a big thing for being sustainable over time is ensuring that we don’t lose money.”
“We need to make sure Twitch is the right size so that we can be here for a very long time,” he continued, explaining that is was “critical” that Twitch had a future and existed 100 years from now. “Our job is to run Twitch in a manner that can ensure its prosperity and it’s here for you and your communities that you’ve built, because I don’t think the other platforms are actually like Twitch at all.”
“The bottom line is we were bigger than we needed to be in terms of the size we needed to be to service your needs,” he added. “I think we’re still going to see a lot happening in 2024 that you’ll be very excited about.”
However, Clancy did reassure fans that Twitch wasn’t at risk of being axed by Amazon. “Amazon is supportive. No chance of this. They just want us to drive to profitability,” he explained.
Not at all. Amazon is supportive. No chance of this. They just want us to drive to profitability.
— Daniel Clancy (@djclancy999) January 11, 2024
In June, Twitch tried to change the way advertisers could use the platform but plans were dropped following backlash from streamers and last month, Twitch was forced to roll back changes to its nude art rules after concerns about AI-created imagery was shared by the community.
In other news, Baldur’s Gate 3 fans are asking Larian Studios to work on bringing Danny DeVito into the game after a hilarious It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia fan edit.
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