Today, Amazon reportedly laid off 500 employees at the live streaming service Twitch, or about 35% of its workforce, according to a report from Bloomberg. This comes as, in early 2023, Amazon laid off about 400 employees.
Twitch focuses heavily on streaming live gaming streams but has expanded in recently years to stream a wide range of content. Twitch, which was bought by Amazon in 2014, saw substantial growth in the summer of 2020. Now, Twitch is facing competition from newcomers and older services like YouTube, which has been pulling away some content creators.
In recent months Twitch faced controversy after it relaxed rules on nudity to allow artistic nudity. Quickly, though, Twitch tightened its rules and once again imposing limits on nudity, including artistic nudity.
In total, Amazon has laid off almost 1,000 employees over the last few years as it makes cuts to Twitch. Like many streaming services, Twitch is facing a soft ad market that has seen ad revenues for many services drop as advertisers pay less and demand for ads is up.
This also comes as last year Amazon announced plans to cut 9,000 employees. Amazon also recently announced it planned to shut down Twitch in Korea because of high costs and low revenue.
Cord Cutters News is reaching out to Amazon for comment on this story.