Just a day after Unity announced it would be laying off 1,800 employees as part of an ongoing “company reset”, it’s being reported that live-streaming site Twitch is now poised to cut 35 percent of its workforce – equalling around 500 jobs – later this week.
That’s according to Bloomberg’s Cecilia D’Anastasio, who, citing “people familiar with the plans”, reports the cuts could be announced as early as Wednesday.
While Twitch declined to comment on the story when approached by Bloomberg, the publication claims the job cuts come amid continuing struggles for the live-streaming site. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Twitch still remains unprofitable nine years after Amazon acquired the company for $970m.
If reports of layoffs at Twitch prove to be accurate, they follow two rounds of job cuts at the company last year. In March, more than 400 employees lost their jobs as part of major layoffs at Amazon, and a further round of cuts – this time focused on Twitch’s customer experience team – were reported in October.
Despite being a stellar year for game releases, 2023 was notably blighted by extensive layoffs across a huge number of studios, with the total number of workers affected believed to be around 9,500. Word of significant job cuts at Unity and Twitch just weeks into January make for a troubling start to 2024.
