Amazon's game-oriented live streaming service Twitch will soon shut down services in South Korea, which is arguably one of the biggest video gaming markets in the world, particularly for PC gamers.
In a blog post, Twitch stated that it will cease operations in Korea on February 27, 2024. Its CEO Dan Clancy stated that the decision came due to the extremely high costs of operating Twitch in that country.
Clancy wrote that Twitch has operated in Korea at a loss for several years due in part because the network fees in that country are up to 10 times higher compared to what they are in other parts of the world. He stated that the company has tried several ways to cut costs, such as using P2P technology for source quality and even cutting down the resolution of streams to 720p. However, these tactics did not stop the company from experiencing what he called "significant losses".
Clancy stated this was a "very difficult and difficult decision" and that the company was "deeply saddened" it had to make it. He added (translated)
Korea has always been a stellar player in the global esports community and will continue to do so. We'd like to thank you all for your hard work building a great Twitch community.
All Korean Twitch streamers will have to relocate their channels to other services such as AfreecaTV and YouTube. Twitch says it will help in that transition by allowing Korean streamers to use its notification feature to send links to their other streaming homes. Clancy stated:
In addition, we plan to discuss with the relevant companies to see if there is anything we can do to help with transferring the community to other services, and we will inform you of any progress in this regard.
Twitch recently announced some new features for streamers at its TwitchCon event, including Streaming Together which will allow up to six Twitch streamers to work together at once while also streaming from their own channels.
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