Twitch Employees Worry About Potential Layoffs

There are concerns that Twitch may be planning another round of job cuts. The Wall Street Journal reports that the platform is experiencing slowing user growth, which could lead to further redundancies. If this happens, it will be in addition to the layoffs that occurred in March 2023, October 2023, and January 2024, which resulted in the loss of at least 900 jobs. Amazon, Twitch's parent company, is said to be anxious about the livestreaming service's financial performance. Although Twitch's revenue is not publicly disclosed, internal documents reportedly show that it generated around $2 billion in advertising and revenue in 2023. However, Amazon is still losing money. According to the WSJ, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been leading a review of the company's profitability and has shown little patience for unprofitable businesses. As a result, Twitch staff are worried that the platform could become another underperforming brand within Amazon, similar to Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon in 2013. An Amazon spokesperson stated that the company has always taken a long-term view of Twitch and is confident in its potential, citing its ability to attract hard-to-reach audiences and lack of competition in the livestream space. In January, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said that the company is adjusting its organization to reflect its current scale and conservative growth predictions. Recently, Twitch updated its policies on sexual harassment, including a new AutoMod category to flag chat messages that may contain sexual harassment. This update follows allegations of inappropriate conversations between a prominent streamer and a minor on the platform.