Twitch CEO breaks silence on layoffs with more bad news
It seems that those Bloomberg reports were right - Twitch has laid off a huge number of its staff. It's a sad reflection of the attitude of business owners right now, and it's clear that even the biggest companies in the gaming industry aren't safe.
Twitch has been holding the streaming world up for a long time now, but as competitors like Kick and Rumble rise out of the water, many are feeling as though the company's time as the king of streaming platforms has come to an end.
The news of around 500 staff members losing their jobs was deeply depressing, and now, the CEO of Twitch has come forward to make clear that it's potentially going to get worse for the streaming giant.
Twitch CEO: "Twitch is not profitable"
In a stream following the layoffs, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has revealed that things at the company are a little more dire than previously thought. Clancy has revealed that even now, Twitch isn't turning a profit.
"I’ll be blunt, we aren’t profitable at this point," he says. "So while [Twitch] still has enough resources, [we] won’t be able to do as much as [we] could have done before."
While it makes for no excuse when it comes to the layoffs, it's shocking news. With Twitch subsidised by parent company Amazon, it seems to be still functioning as a business, but for the company fighting to be a champion in the space and losing by the day, it could be an indicator that Twitch is in very real trouble.
Twitch CEO comments on recent layoffs
Click to enlargeIn the stream, Clancy goes on to comment on the layoffs that the company executed the day before. "In terms of making the decision, we need to make sure Twitch is the right size so we can be here for a long time," he says.
"We have a very important mission. It’s critical Twitch is not just here today, tomorrow, but 50 years, 100 years from now. Our job is to run Twitch in a manner to ensure its prosperity and that it can be here for the communities you’ve built."
If Twitch wants to be around 100 years from now, it might want to prioritise not financing million-dollar deals to hold onto former Call of Duty players and deal with accusations it hired more staff than it needs before sacking them after realising it can't afford them. But hey, we're not running the show over there.
