Twitch exits S. Korea over ‘prohibitively expensive’ operating costs

Amazon’s game streaming platform, Twitch, has announced its decision to shut down the business in South Korea in February 2024. Twitch’s reasoning behind this decision is due to ‘prohibitively expensive’ operating costs and high network fees in the country.

“Twitch has been operating in Korea at a significant loss, and unfortunately there is no pathway forward for our business to run more sustainably in that country,” Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said in a blog post.

For transparency, Twitch said that they spent significant efforts to reduce cost and maintain operations in the country. They have experimented with a peer-to-peer model for source quality and then adjusted the maximum source quality to 720p.

Ultimately, Clancy blamed Korea’s network usage fees that are 10 times more expensive compared in most other countries.

Twitch’s closure in the Korea is scheduled on February 27, 2024. This will mark a significant change in the country’s streaming landscape with booming esports scene, especially with its most popular gaming personality, Faker.

“We would like to reiterate that this was a very difficult decision, and one that all of us at Twitch are deeply saddened by.”

I wanted to quickly send my thoughts out to the Korean streamers that are impacted by the decision we have announced today. As I stated in the blog and in the live stream, this was a very difficult decision that we delayed for some time. I just wanted to send out my thoughts to…

— Daniel Clancy (@djclancy999) December 6, 2023

With the announcement, Clancy assured that the company will assist Korean streamers transition to other local livestreaming services.

“Twitch streamers in Korea have devoted significant time and effort into building their communities, and we plan to help these communities find new homes — even if it’s regrettably not on Twitch,” he said.