San Francisco: Amazon-owned live game streaming platform Twitch is reportedly laying off 35 percent of its workforce, about 500 employees, this week. Twitch laid off dozens of employees last year and shut down its service in South Korea due to "prohibitively expensive" costs.


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According to a Bloomberg report, the fresh job cuts, "which could be announced as soon as Wednesday," come amid concerns over losses at Twitch. Earlier, when Twitch co-founder and CEO Emmett Shear paved the way for new CEO Dan Clancy, the company laid off 400 employees.


Amazon cut another 180 jobs late last year when it shut down its Crown channel, the Amazon-run Twitch programming, and closed its Game Growth group. Last month, Twitch said it plans to shut down its South Korean service in February this year due to high network usage fees in the country.


Clancy said the company "made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in Korea on February 27, 2024."


The cost to operate Twitch in South Korea was "prohibitively expensive," and the company spent significant effort, such as adjusting the video quality on the service, to reduce business costs.


In November last year, the platform suspended its video-on-demand service in South Korea, seen as a protest against the country's controversial network usage fee.