Following news that parent company Amazon would be cutting 9,000 jobs worldwide, Twitch has announced its own round of layoffs, with over 400 staff impacted. The decision was reportedly made to improve the company’s sustainability amidst a tough ‘macroeconomic environment’ as user and revenue growth has reportedly faltered in recent years.
‘As a company focused on building community together, this decision was incredibly difficult and one we did not make without considerable thought,’ newly-appointed Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said.
‘Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce.’
According to Polygon, employees do not currently know whether their roles have been impacted, but will be informed by the end of March. Twitch has reportedly refused to confirm the company’s current headcount, and how the layoffs will impact day-to-day operations.
Read: Microsoft is laying off 10,000 jobs, Bethesda and Xbox impacted
The news arrives at an unfortunate time, as layoffs have hit countless tech and games-adjacent organisations in recent months.
Microsoft cut 10,000 jobs in January 2023. Take-Two cut staff at studios including 2K Games and Private Division. Riot Games recently reduced its workforce, and EA slashed hundreds of QA jobs at its Baton Rouge studio.
In addition, this is the second major round of layoffs for Amazon, which announced a whopping 18,000 job cuts in early 2023. As economic pressures mount and the jobs market dwindles, news of more layoffs is frustrating to see – particularly when they arrive at times of so-called record-breaking profits for big tech companies.
There is a massive human cost to these decisions – and our thoughts are with those currently in the lurch at Twitch, and other Amazon subsidiaries.
