Twitch lays off 400 employees after cuts at Amazon

Twitch’s parent company, Amazon, announced a new round of layoffs that will affect over 9000 people, and as a result, over Twitch’s 400 employees have been let go.

Amazon is once again reducing its workforce after firing more than 18,000 workers in January. This time, the cloud service, human resources, and advertising divisions will lose 9,000 employees. According to a brief statement from Twitch’s new CEO Dan Clancy, subsidiary Twitch will also be impacted, with more than 400 employees at the game streaming service losing their jobs.

According to Amazon’s corporate blog, the layoffs are an effort to reduce costs after the business suffered a loss in its most recent fiscal year. In 2022, Amazon recorded its worst-ever fourth quarter and its first annual financial loss since 2014.

Along with the layoffs, the company will close eight more Amazon Go locations, shelve plans for dozens more US warehouses, and put a stop to construction on its second Virginia headquarters. According to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the company has decided to reduce its costs and employees in response to the uncertain economy.

As the company makes a choice on who will be let go, Jassy stated that Amazon will begin making layoffs over the next few weeks. Some Twitch employees claimed that they learned about the news first through social media, contrary to the Amazon blog post’s assertion that staff members received the information before the announcement post.

According to reports, a number of Twitch employees are still unsure of whether they will remain in their positions and will learn their status before the start of the following week. Dan Clancy, the newly appointed CEO of Twitch, stated that making the decision to cut staff members was essential to ensuring Twitch’s long-term viability.

The wave of layoffs continues

It’s interesting that the news was released so soon after Twitch CEO Emmet Shear announced his resignation. Shear made a lot of his statements about becoming a father and entering a new stage of life, but one has to question if the wave of mass layoffs didn’t have anything to do with it.

The news comes amid a wave of massive job cuts that began in the United States’ top tech giants and have since expanded to numerous other global industries, including gaming and esports. Prominent esports organizations have recently been forced to fire a significant portion of their workforce because of industry-wide financial difficulties.

Just a few months ago, over 20 TSM employees were let go from various divisions, while 12 people departed from 100 Thieves. After Bethesda Game Studios, and 343 Industries, Riot Games reportedly fired 46 employess and Ubisoft has also made hints about layoffs.

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