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Twitch lays off more than 400 staff

cjelly

cjelly

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,263
www.eurogamer.net

Twitch lays off 400 employees as part of latest Amazon cuts

More than 400 Twitch employees have lost their jobs as part of a further round of layoffs at parent company Amazon. Ama…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

More than 400 Twitch employees have lost their jobs as part of a further round of layoffs at parent company Amazon.

As reported by Polygon, however, Twitch did not inform those impacted by the layoffs ahead of today's announcement. Instead, Clancy told employees in an all-staff email that everyone affected will be informed "no later than early next week".

In a public statement, Clancy blamed the layoffs on the "current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth [that] has not kept pace with our expectations."
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Kind of feels like the Amazon thing hasn't worked out.
 
alias bean

alias bean

Member
Oct 27, 2017
179
I haven't watched anything on Twitch in months, the ads are beyond insane and make it unwatchable unless you're subbed to the streamer. I understand the need for ads but they way its setup right now ain't it.
 

Miyahon

Member
Nov 8, 2017
582
alias bean said:
I haven't watched anything on Twitch in months, the ads are beyond insane and make it unwatchable unless you're subbed to the streamer. I understand the need for ads but they way its setup right now ain't it.
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True hard to discover new streamers since you are hit with ads every time you switch to another stream.

Unless you sub to Twitch turbo where you won't get ads for all streams.
 
Messofanego

Messofanego

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,190
UK
These tech companies are so cruel, especially in not giving notice about the layoffs ahead of time. No time to process or plan for your next step ahead.
 
FuzzyAssassin

FuzzyAssassin

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
630
Miyahon said:
True hard to discover new streamers since you are hit with ads every time you switch to another stream.

Unless you sub to Twitch turbo where you won't get ads for all streams.
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Twitch Turbo has made me use Twitch I like previously did. I'm not subscribing to as many streamers, but the experience is night and day better than seeing ads.
 

Deleted member 56266

Account closed at user request
Banned
Apr 25, 2019
7,291
I dont stream but I also hear ad revenue for small to small-mid streamers is a pittance these days. Like all time low level. Only way to even begin to consider making it a full time thing is having a huge following.
 
Maple

Maple

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,732
They're making more money than ever, yet are laying off hundreds of people. And this is coming just a few weeks after they released an "update" that completely ruined the Twitch app on Apple TV.

I was really hoping Mixer would have taken off because Twitch desperately needs competition. It's such an awful platform.
 

SP.

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,569
They've been updating all their TV apps the past few months and it's been pretty major downgrades across the board. The Apple TV app is pretty unusable right now.

Feels like Amazons making pretty major cuts there.
 

Vector

Member
Feb 28, 2018
6,657
These cuts seem to be affecting all of Amazon, so I'm not sure why Twitch would be exempt to that.
 
Spoit

Spoit

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,989
Messofanego said:
These tech companies are so cruel, especially in not giving notice about the layoffs ahead of time. No time to process or plan for your next step ahead.
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I mean, at least unlike smaller companies, amazon is actually offering a few months worth of severance. When I was laid off because invenstors are flighty idots, all I got was my PTO paid out
 
eyeball_kid

eyeball_kid

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,236
FuzzyAssassin said:
Twitch Turbo has made me use Twitch I like previously did. I'm not subscribing to as many streamers, but the experience is night and day better than seeing ads.
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Sounds like the increase of ads and the presence of Twitch Turbo is incentivizing people to give more money to Amazon instead of giving that money to the people that deserve it.

But I would also sub to more streamers if the base subscription price was a lot lower.
 
Qikz

Qikz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,491
alias bean said:
I haven't watched anything on Twitch in months, the ads are beyond insane and make it unwatchable unless you're subbed to the streamer. I understand the need for ads but they way its setup right now ain't it.
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They make so much money from absolutely fleecing most streamers, I don't think they need the ad revenue at all. They also barely pay the creators for ads in spite of saying that it's to support the streamer.
 
Symphony

Symphony

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,361
Doc Holliday said:
How is that even possible?!? It's not like Twitch is producing expensive content.
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Serving and storing all that video content, and IIRC there was something which came out last year that implied they were still paying massive amounts to AWS instead of y'know, getting it at cost, being in the same company and all.
 
OP
OP
cjelly

cjelly

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,263
Qikz said:
They make so much money from absolutely fleecing most streamers, I don't think they need the ad revenue at all. They also barely pay the creators for ads in spite of saying that it's to support the streamer.
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This must be it.

Most of the ads I see are for Amazon products or services. Always thought that was weird.
 
Ricky

Ricky

Member
Oct 25, 2017
912
I wonder if MS would consider bringing Mixer back? A friend of mine switched over to Kick and it seemed ok.
It's a bit barebones though, no mobile app yet.
 
julia crawford

julia crawford

Took the red AND the blue pills
Member
Oct 27, 2017
35,289
What the fuck 😐 the company makes billions but can't figure out how to survive this without taking away the livelihood of 400 people?
 
Tomasoares

Tomasoares

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,535
10k from Meta, 9k from Amazon, now more from Twitch only this month.
It has been a bad, bad year for IT and it doesn't look like it's going to stop :(
 
FUNKNOWN iXi

FUNKNOWN iXi

▲ Legend ▲
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
9,596
Ads are fucking insane.

Truly insane. I haven't used Twitch in a couple of years because of it, and whenever I randomly decide to jump around to check out new streamers, ad after ad after ad after ad.
 
M. Wallace

M. Wallace

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,152
Midwest
I use ublock origin, purple ads blocker and TTV LOL extensions for ads, a few squeak by here and there but it's mostly ad free.
 
Opposable

Opposable

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,367
Agree with what others have said. I used to flick through channels like TV 10 years ago and regularly find smaller streams or games I liked being played. Now I extremely rarely even bother to check the website. Even then, I would never search out channels to watch cause of ads.
 
Keyser S

Keyser S

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
8,480
The tech that runs Twitch seem to be the same tech the runs Amazon Live (Shopping channels), so the cross over potential of the tech seem to be useful for amazon even if the site itself can be a money hole


Also, Amazon Live is a fucking weird thing
 
vixolus

vixolus

Prophet of Truth
Member
Sep 22, 2020
54,527
Ambient said:
Interesting. I know nothing about business, I'm always curious how long big companies like Amazon allow divisions to operate in the red.
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i guess it all comes down to how they do accounting. Seemingly they charge market rates for AWS (which makes sense given Twitch will just host shit in AWS like anyone else), but then it's like is that cost equalized with the AWS division's revenues/costs/rates, and how does Prime get factored into everything. Like is Twitch driving Prime subs that are tracked as part of Twitch's revenue or is that all being accounted under Amazon Prime. Whereas Twitch may be solely ad spend, subs, turbo, sponsored streams, bits... Drops? Hard to say.

I have to imagine they have a good business model with drops and game integrations and their 50% stream sub cuts.. but live video ain't cheap so it's tough to really say.
 
Kouriozan

Kouriozan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
21,124
I'm not using Twitch that much anymore, I know I will be assaulted by countless ads before even thinking about checking a new streamer.
The way they forced streamers to put ads, pre-rolls or hourly, while decreasing ad revenue is disgusting.
 
LycanXIII

LycanXIII

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
10,004
As reported by Polygon, however, Twitch did not inform those impacted by the layoffs ahead of today's announcement. Instead, Clancy told employees in an all-staff email that everyone affected will be informed "no later than early next week".
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Isn't that email telling them, in advance, that 400 of them will be laid off? I guess majority of the company will be warry that they could be one of the 400, but it gives them a week to prepare.
 
Iced_Eagle

Iced_Eagle

Member
Dec 26, 2017
838
Ambient said:
Interesting. I know nothing about business, I'm always curious how long big companies like Amazon allow divisions to operate in the red.
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There's lots of ways these products bring value to Amazon as a company, that when focusing just on their unit they may be in the red. Best analogy I can think of is how console hardware used to be run at a loss, but it was okay because they made it up in software. So if you focus just on hardware, they were unprofitable, but if you look at the broader organization, they are profitable.
 
ChitonIV

ChitonIV

Member
Nov 14, 2021
2,169
Messofanego said:
I'm aware it's not just tech companies cause companies in general suck at labour issues. And since I'm on a videogame forum, I'll have a more concentrated stream of news about tech companies more than others.
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It's mainly about avoiding the wrath of the disgruntled employee. And Washington is an "at will" state for employment. So, no legal issue.
 
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