Twitch Lays Off Over 500 People

Twitch announced today that it will be laying off more than 500 people. In a statement published on the Twitch blog, CEO Dan Clancy referred to the move as an attempt to "rightsize our company." Clancy went on to note that the move is "necessary to ensure that we can continue to serve our streamers sustainably without impacting their ability to support their careers on Twitch." Clancy also stated that the company is bigger than it can currently afford, and the current staffing is based on estimates of where the company will be in the future, rather than where it is right now. 

"Over the last year, we've been working to build a more sustainable business so that Twitch will be here for the long run and throughout the year we have cut costs and made many decisions to be more efficient. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, it has become clear that our organization is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business," Clancy wrote. "Last year we paid out over $1 billion to streamers. So while the Twitch business remains strong, for some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we're at today. As with many other companies in the tech space, we are now sizing our organization based upon the current scale of our business and conservative predictions of how we expect to grow in the future."

Roles Affected by the Twitch Layoffs

Clancy does not go into detail about what roles will be cut from Twitch, only saying that emails will be sent to staffers letting them know either way. However, his comments do reflect one of the bigger problems that are facing a lot of "other companies in the tech space" at the moment. Twitch is essentially laying off employees to better scale for its current needs, ignoring the fact that, if the company's projections are correct, they'll need that level of staffing in 3 years and be forced to start looking to replace these lost roles in the near future. It's also possible those projections were wrong in the first place, and if that is the case, will someone responsible for those estimates see their role affected? At this time, there's simply no way of knowing. 

Video Game Industry Layoffs

The layoffs at Twitch come in the midst of a very tough time for those employed in and around the video game industry. Over the last several months, a number of companies have been cutting jobs, including Bungie, Crystal Dynamics, Epic Games, Telltale, Media Molecule, Niantic, and Firaxis. That's not even to mention some of the studios that have closed down, such as Volition. It's very disappointing to see, and even if it allows these companies to stay in business, there are a lot of people that are out of a job as a result. 

Are you surprised by these layoffs at Twitch? Was your job affected by the layoffs? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!