Twitch Lays Off Over 400 People, CEO Steps Down

Twitch announced that it has has undergone a mass layoff, with more than 400 employees losing their jobs. Along with this news, Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear has stepped down after 16 years.

As explained in a recent blog post written by new Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, the company has let go of 400 people as a means to cut costs.

"User and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations," Clancy said. "In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce."

This comes as part of a larger round of layoffs across Amazon, which owns Twitch. In total, Amazon suffered over 9,000 layoffs across all its divisions.

Now-former Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear announced his departure from the company on March 20, 2023. "With my first child just born, I’ve been reflecting on my future with Twitch," Shear said.

"Twitch often feels to me like a child I’ve been raising as well. And while I will always want to be there if Twitch needs me, at 16 years old it feels to me Twitch is ready to move out of the house and venture alone. So it is with great poignancy that I share my decision to resign from Twitch as CEO."

Twitch's new CEO is Dan Clancy, who previously served as the company's president prior to Shear's departure.

Twitch says it has "big opportunities ahead to support" streamers and their communities following the news of the layoffs, though it's unclear what this entails.