Twitch laying off over 500 workers in round of staff cuts

Streaming behemoth Twitch has confirmed layoff plans which will impact over 500 staff members, effective immediately.

Initially reported by Bloomberg and now confirmed via a blog post from CEO Dan Clancy, the layoffs to kick off 2024 follow two rounds of layoffs last year that cut around 400 positions. This means close to 1000 Twitch employees will have lost their jobs in less than a year, as the gaming industry across the board continues to be gutted.

CEO Dan Clancy said in the post: “This will be a very hard day. Our service exists to empower communities to create, together, and every single one of you has played a vital role in fostering our community and furthering that mission.” He went on to mention that even with the cost-cutting form last year, Twitch “is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business.”

“Last year we paid out over $1 billion to streamers. So 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.” he continues. “As with many other companies in the tech space, we are now sizing our organization based upon the current scale of our business and conservative predictions of how we expect to grow in the future.”

Layoffs across the video game industry was a super worrying trend in 2023, with several companies – including some local Aussie gems – having to resort to reducing their workforce due to economic conditions, among other reasons.

It seems like even in the new year, jobs in the video game industry will continue to be at risk. We wish everybody affected by this news all the best in securing a new position elsewhere.