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With esports being such a huge industry in Asia, services like Twitch have become very popular in places like South Korea. However, due to rising operating costs, Twitch, the biggest games streaming platform, is now pulling out of the country.
Twitch has officially declared its decision to terminate its services in South Korea by February. In a blog post, CEO Dan Clancy stated, “This morning, I shared with our community in Korea that we've made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in Korea on February 27, 2024.”
Clancy attributed the closure to escalating operating costs in the region, saying: “The cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive, and we have spent significant effort working to reduce these costs.” Despite attempting measures such as experimenting with a peer-to-peer model and adjusting source quality to a maximum of 720p, the company found that network fees in Korea remained substantially higher than other countries.
Acknowledging the financial strain, Clancy noted, “The company has been operating at a significant loss in the region,” and described the situation as “unique.”
If you happen to be a South Korean Twitch streamer reading this, then you should also be informed that Twitch plans to “help these communities find new homes”, so you may be able to take your audience with you to another platform. However, as we saw with various' streamers move to now defunct platform, Mixer, this doesn't always work out that well.
Whether or not Twitch returns to operating within South Korea still remains to be seen. For now, the company is moving towards winding down service in the country next year.
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KitGuru Says: With Twitch still being the biggest live-streaming platform for gamers, this is a huge shame to see, particularly for the esports scene. This might be a tad more palatable if Twitch was still an independent company, but as an Amazon-owned corporation, it certainly looks a lot worse.
