Twitch CEO openly admits platform is unprofitable
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has publicly admitted that the popular streaming platform is unprofitable.
During a Q&A following the announcement of a new round of layoffs at the company, Clancy explained that “we’ve hinted at this before, saying we need to be resilient, but let me be clear: We’re not profitable at the moment.” , which justifies the layoff of nearly five hundred employees, representing thirty-five percent of the workforce.
According to the manager, “Amazon understood Twitch very well and played an important role in ensuring we didn’t lose money,” but an email sent to employees earlier this week said the company “continues to be larger than necessary given the size our business,” an idea that Clancy repeated during the Q&A, saying that “we need to make sure Twitch is the right size to be here for the long term. It’s critical that Twitch isn’t here today.” “Not tomorrow, but in fifty or a hundred years.”
“Our job is to manage Twitch in a way that ensures it thrives and grows and is here for you and the communities you create, because I don’t think other platforms are like Twitch.”
Clancy also noted that the waves of layoffs were not something exclusive to Twitch and that they have affected the entire tech industry over the past year. “This isn’t unique to Twitch, in fact it’s quite common for tech companies to adapt their size by thinking about where they’ll be in three or four years. And of course, we at Twitch have big dreams of where we’ll be. what will be and how we are going to continue to grow through live streaming. However, we must manage the company based on where we are today.”
The layoffs also come in addition to the announcement that Twitch will cease operations in South Korea due to costs. Regarding the concern this has caused, Clancy insisted: “I want to be clear that we still have more than enough resources. We still have a reasonable sized organization. We will continue to offer services for your needs. We will still have a reasonably sized organization. We are going to continue to improve the product. We won’t be able to do as much as we could have done before, but I think we’ll see a lot of things to be excited about in 2024. .
Meanwhile, complaints about monetization continue to fly in. The platform has received numerous complaints in recent years, both from streamers (over revenue percentage) and from the public itself (over aggressive advertising), and new monetization methods and advertising incentives don’t seem to be working as planned.