Amazon has made a significant job cut announcement, and it has been revealed that Twitch will be losing 400 jobs as a result.
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy announced in a memo saying that he hasn’t told the employees yet and they will hear “no later than early next week.” He went on to say:
“I’m disappointed to share the news this way before we’re able to communicate directly to those who will be impacted, but it’s important for you to hear directly from me confirming this difficult news,”
In the memo, he blamed the layoff on “the current macroeconomic environment.” He said in the memo that user and revenue growth didn’t meet their expectations. He also stated:
“In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce.”
Amazon originally laid off more than 18,000 people in January and it is now cutting its workforce again by another 9,000 jobs.
This year, big tech layoffs have become a common phenomenon, with the gaming industry being no exception.
In January, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees, causing disruptions to the campaign efforts of developers at Bethesda Game Studios and the Halo team at 343 Industries.
Similarly, Riot Games also downsized its workforce by letting go of 46 employees, which is now viewed as a regular practice for large corporations.
Furthermore, Ubisoft indicated that they might have to carry out layoffs due to the “worsening macroeconomics,” prompting a strike by Ubisoft Paris developers.
Justin. tv, which was founded in 2007, was rebranded to Twitch Interactive in 2014. In the same year, Amazon purchased the streaming platform for $1 billion.
The pandemic was particularly successful for Twitch. In addition to dominating the streaming space, the platform was more popular than ever. Despite declining viewership numbers, Twitch is still popular.
This news might come as a shock to many as Twitch is a well-known and very popular streaming platform with many genres and topics being covered.
Although it isn’t fair to the employees to find out this way it Is understandable that the CEO wanted them to hear it first before the news hit.