Over 500 Layoffs At Twitch, Amazon's Bay Area Video Game Streaming Platform

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitch, Amazon’s San Francisco-based video game streaming platform, will lay off more than 500 workers, its CEO announced this week.

“Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch,” CEO Dan Clancy said Wednesday in an email to employees posted on the company’s website.

“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. 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.”

Twitch is a multi-channel online network built for a generation of people raised with video games to watch some of the best gamers in the world as many people watch professional sports.

The cuts come as the company tries to turn the tremendously expensive division profitable.

Amazon purchased Twitch Interactive in 2014 for $970 million as it looked for a way to take part in video gaming’s growth as an online spectator sport.

In other Bay Area job news, Mountain View-based Google confirmed this week it was in the process of laying off several hundred employees.

Amazon is also cutting several hundred positions across its Prime Video and MGM Studios unit.

Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said in a note to employees that the company is boosting investment in areas with the most impact while stepping back from others.

In addition, Amazon-owned online audiobook and podcast service Audible is laying off about 5 percent of its workforce.

Amazon has cut thousands of jobs after a hiring surge during the pandemic. In March, Amazon announced that it planned to lay off 9,000 employees. That was on top of the 18,000 employees the tech giant said that it would lay off in January 2023.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.