400 Twitch employees laid off in latest round of Amazon cuts
Over 400 employees at Twitch have been laid off, after parent company Amazon announced a new wave of redundancies targeting over 9000 workers. The news comes courtesy of Amazon’s corporate blog, which says that the layoffs are an attempt to cut costs after the company posted a loss in its last financial year.
The blog notes that this is the second round of layoffs at Amazon this year, with the previous round in January seeing over 18,000 employees exited from the company. This new round has comparatively less, but is targeted towards workers in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and of course Twitch.
While the Amazon blog post says that the news was shared with employees prior to the announcement post, many Twitch employees say the first they heard about it was on social media. According to Polygon, many employees at the streaming giant still don’t know if they’ll retain their positions, and are said to find out before early next week.
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, who was promoted to the role just days ago, said that the choice to lay off employees was necessary to ensure Twitch was sustainable in the long-term.
“I’m disappointed to share the news this way before we’re able to communicate directly to those who will be impacted, but it’s important for you to hear directly from me confirming this difficult news,” Clancy reportedly said in an email to workers, “In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce”.
That echoes the statement from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who said that reducing the headcount “made sense” given the current state of the economy. That’s a bit of a tough line to swallow, though, as Amazon continues to bring in billions of dollars in revenue across its multiple sectors.
Former CEO Emmett Shear announced his retirement from the company just days ago, after almost 17 years at the company. It comes at a rocky time for the streaming giant, as it attempts to tackle objectionable content and behavior on its platform.
Twitch said it would ban streamers who showed explicit deepfake videos, after a months-long drama was sparked when streamer Atrioc accidentally showed his audience he was watching them. Dozens of streamers spoke out against the non-consensual content, and Twitch responded by harshening its rules for displaying or advocating for it.
Amazon isn’t the only company laying off employees en masse, either. Not long ago, Microsoft announced it would lay off 10,000 employees, including a host of staff at Halo developer 343 Industries and Starfield developer Bethesda, despite seemingly having billions of dollars to spend on buying Activision Blizzard.
