The gaming industry and streaming culture is rapidly changing and because of that, the companies around them must also change. Unfortunately, those shifts don’t always mean good things as seen in the recent layoff wave happening right now over at the Twitch offices.
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Though we don’t have an exact number, our sources are giving an estimate of 20-25 members being let go in an effort to make necessary readjustments to the infrastructure. A Twitch spokesperson has also confirmed the layoffs while giving a little context for the reasoning behind them:
“Coming off the record-setting numbers shared in our 2017 Retrospective, Twitch is continuing to grow and advance with success stories from Overwatch League to Fortnite’s milestone-setting streams. In order to maintain this momentum, we have an aggressive growth strategy for 2018 with plans to increase our headcount by approximately 30%. While we’ve conducted team adjustments in some departments, our focus is on prioritizing areas most important for the community.”
Though right now, certain positions are being let go, our Twitch source does maintain that they are looking to increase the number of people under the Twitch umbrella by about 30% over the next year.
Esports consultant Rod Breslau took to Twitter to shed some light on the circumstance:
Some Twitch employees were fired by new Twitch VP of Content Michael Aragon who wasn’t even in the office and did this via a remote Google Hangouts call. Employees were told to leave immediately. Morale is at an all-time low at Twitch, with one saying “We got amazon’d. Sad day.”
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) March 30, 2018
Even one of the most high-profile employees over at Twitch has been let go, Ben “FishStix” Goldhaber:
7 years.
From 25 employees to 1200. 5 million monthly uniques to 100. 0 partnered creators to tens of thousands. Millions of lives changed, hopefully for the better.
It was a pretty good run, I’d say :’)
— Ben Goldhaber (@FishStix) March 30, 2018
It’s never easy to go through this change and our thoughts are definitely with those employees, and their families, during this time. Hopefully the restructuring will resettle and perhaps even open back up some opportunities to those previously let go.
(via Polygon)
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Image courtesy of HBO
