Twitch is reportedly laying off 500 workers as soon as this week. That number is around 35 percent of its workforce.
The news today comes from a report from Bloomberg’s Cecilia D’Anastasio. Twitch is the latest company in the wider gaming space to see massive contractions. The Amazon-owned streaming website has been arguably the biggest cultural tastemaker and marketing tool for game developers in recent years, which has in turn led to a surge in the “creator economy.”
The layoffs have not been publicly acknowledged by Twitch, but according to Bloomberg’s report, the news could come down the pipe internally as early as Wednesday, Jan. 10.
The numbers in this round of layoffs are staggering. They’re compounded by the two other rounds of layoffs that hit Twitch in 2023. 400 Twitch employees were reportedly let go shortly after new CEO Dan Clancy took over the helm in April 2023. Another round of layoffs was reported last October. In total, over the last calendar year, the layoffs at Twitch number nearly 1,000, according to reported numbers.
The Amazon-owned service is far from the only company in the gaming space that’s being hit hard. Esports’ woes are well-documented, and the gaming industry writ large appears to be downsizing across the board.
The mass layoffs in every corner of the industry are concerning to say the least when juxtaposed with the absurd profits it’s been generating. Fans and workers alike hoped that the attrition would be contained to 2023. So far, it seems like the nightmare year for the gaming industry is just going to continue in 2024.
