Twitch is cutting one-third of its staff

Twitch is laying off more than 500 employees, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy announced this morning, reportedly accounting for around 35 percent of its staff. Bloomberg first reported that the video game streaming platform was planning layoffs on Tuesday, and the company confirmed today that the cuts were happening.

“I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch,” Clancy wrote. “This will be a very hard day.”

In March 2023, Twitch cut 400 roles as part of larger layoffs at parent company Amazon that saw 18,000 people lose their jobs. Additionally, several Twitch executives including chief product officer Tom Verrilli, chief customer officer Doug Scott, and chief content officer Laura Lee all announced that they were leaving the company. Last month, the company also announced that it would cease operations in South Korea, citing “prohibitively expensive” network fees. The service is set to shut down in the country on February 27th.

In the announcement, Clancy noted that Twitch paid out over $1 billion to streamers last year, remarking that “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 in 3 or more years, not where we’re at today.”

Clancy also wrote that he would be hosting a stream on Thursday at 1PM PT to address what these layoffs mean for the larger Twitch streaming community.

The cuts at Twitch were accompanied by layoffs elsewhere at Amazon today. The company’s Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions also cut hundreds of roles.