Twitch reportedly still unprofitable, paid over $1 billion to streamers in 2023.
See full article...
See full article...
Amazon lays off 500 Twitch employees, hundreds more at MGM and Prime Video
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
With how many ads Twitch plays you on non-subscribed channels AND the cut they take on subs AND the increased price of Turbo (no ads site wide) I really find it hard to believe they're taking a loss.
I guarantee Twitch will start serving ads to people who subscribe to individual channels before 2024 is over if this keeps up. And that will force me to find other ways to support my favorite content creators.
I guarantee Twitch will start serving ads to people who subscribe to individual channels before 2024 is over if this keeps up. And that will force me to find other ways to support my favorite content creators.
Upvote
205
(206
/
-1)
The world is weird. How can Twitch, with subscriptions, lost money and YouTube be so profitable with skippable banner ads? It's just more confirmation to me that the ad industry is broken, with agencies and online tech giants wasting money while also reporting results. It's probably as broken as the health care industry in America, for similar reasons of asymmetric incentives.
Upvote
228
(231
/
-3)
scortiusthecharioteer
Ars Centurion
I'd love to circle back and touch base on this whole rightsizing thing. Yet another HR term that implies things were wrong when you worked there, but right after you were let go.
Upvote
258
(259
/
-1)
You vastly over estimate how much money they get from ads on Twitch and underestimate how much it costs to run a world wide live streaming service.
Upvote
96
(116
/
-20)
Upvote
138
(151
/
-13)
I don’t know, there’s some solid math behind it. Rightsize is when profit approaches infinity and costs are zero.
Upvote
177
(177
/
0)
YouTube is multiple orders of magnitude larger than Twitch and has only been profitable for what the last 5 years?
Upvote
92
(94
/
-2)
It's almost like all the competing forms of entertainment can't be the number one end all be all form of entertainment. If it's not profitable after nine years there's something wrong with the business. Firing people might be part of that, but it's still fundamentally off.
Upvote
142
(143
/
-1)
Podginator
Ars Centurion
Your poor decisions in hiring should not be placed on the employees you hired. Layoffs should be a last resort. High, multi-million dollar salaries of those at the top should be targeted first and foremost. Or, obviously, they should be laid off for their poor decision making.
Even if this did not equal the yearly salary of 500 people, I can almost guarantee that it'd make these sociopaths think twice.
Even if this did not equal the yearly salary of 500 people, I can almost guarantee that it'd make these sociopaths think twice.
Upvote
142
(159
/
-17)
A big factor is their specialized ASICs which greatly reduced computing costs.
Upvote
28
(29
/
-1)
Twitch has just simply been horribly managed. Sure, YouTube has controversies, but twitch has a new major controversy seemly every week. At least with YouTube, it's due to having to make compromises with copyright holders. Twitch controversies are usually self inflicted.
Upvote
100
(100
/
0)
I don't care about twitch, but on the Amazon side, I went from 20 or so orders a year for 2020 and 2021, to 10 in 2022 and 5 in 2023, and got rid of prime last year as well. Half of the 2023 orders were because I received Amazon cards as gifts and had to spend them on something.
Are others cutting back as well?
Are others cutting back as well?
Upvote
133
(139
/
-6)
So if 500 people is 35% of the employees, and they already laid off 400 other people, we're talking 60-65% of Twitch staff being cut. That's not "rightsizing", that "imploding at rapid rate." If you're saying that the organization was over twice as staffed as it should have been, it's time to purge the leadership as a whole for being complete idiots about how many people it actually takes to run your company.
Of course, it isn't about being "rightsized", and none of those executives will be held responsible, outside of getting a nice golden parachute when Amazon finally decides to pull the plug and shaft the remaining 750 or so employees who are now being asked to take on the responsibilities of their 900 coworkers.
Of course, it isn't about being "rightsized", and none of those executives will be held responsible, outside of getting a nice golden parachute when Amazon finally decides to pull the plug and shaft the remaining 750 or so employees who are now being asked to take on the responsibilities of their 900 coworkers.
Upvote
174
(179
/
-5)
Apparently AWS charges the BU full retail costs and yet they are also forced to use AWS.
So Twitch partly loses money due to money shifting among BUs.
If YouTube got their live streaming shit together, they would replace Twitch super fast. (Seriously just clone their website …)
So Twitch partly loses money due to money shifting among BUs.
If YouTube got their live streaming shit together, they would replace Twitch super fast. (Seriously just clone their website …)
Upvote
107
(110
/
-3)
Ah yes the old "We focused so heavily on cornering the market as quickly as possible, we never built it in a way that would be efficient, scalable, and with a plan for profit" nugget. Not that hard to imagine with how god-aweful the tvOS twitch app is. Constant streams freezing when opening, ads repeating, VODs being almost unwatchable because the video blacks out but audio continues every 30-60 seconds for 5-10 seconds, among other nags.
Or the other old nugget: "We spent all our money on frivolous endeavors and now can report a loss for tax reasons."
I'd imagine somewhere in between given the somewhat recent leak of how many 100s of millions (billion?) of dollars their top streamers were making.
Or the other old nugget: "We spent all our money on frivolous endeavors and now can report a loss for tax reasons."
I'd imagine somewhere in between given the somewhat recent leak of how many 100s of millions (billion?) of dollars their top streamers were making.
Upvote
64
(65
/
-1)
They should just view Twitch as a loss leader. Perhaps that's what they were originally thinking before it became clear that Amazon was so bad at making games. That said, perhaps if Youtube can be profitable, then Twitch will too eventually. If it isn't ground into dust first by beancounters first.
Upvote
59
(59
/
0)
After ordering a camera cage for a Sigma fp and being shipped one for a Sony A7ii three times in a row, my ordering from Amazon really tapered off. Someone stickered the boxes with the wrong tag and because you can't actually contact anyone there's no way to get stuff like this fixed.
OH YAH the third one they didn't refund me for because they 'never received my return' despite having dropped it off at a Hub location.
Upvote
27
(35
/
-8)
It should not be easy or cheap to fire people, that I truly believe.
But ultimately hou hire people to do stuff. If nothing needs to be done, or if the work (after a while) does not produce the revenue to pay those people, than you have no choice but to lay them off so they can go work somewhere else and add value to society.
As said, I don’t mind if a layoff would come with an extra required 1 year salary or something like that. Just that it is not strange that you return people you don’t need back to the pool so someone else can hire them.
Upvote
38
(44
/
-6)
The issue with these companies is they make record profits, but certain portions of their business are not profitable. Labor laws should be a basic human right, and companies should not be allowed to treat their employees like servers they are decommissioning.
Upvote
57
(66
/
-9)
Yes, I cancelled our Prime subscription in 2021 with the news about union busting and working conditions. It was a hard sell to my wife, but it really hasn't been a problem. Prime video sucks except for a couple releases I don't really need. And I don't care if free shipping takes a week. There's nothing I'm ordering online that I truly need next day (or close to it).
Unrelated, I remember when I interviewed for an Amazon IOT position. They didn't offer it to me. Then a year later they asked me to apply again. At that point I was glad I didn't get the job and ghosted their rep. Amazon is the worst.
Upvote
59
(62
/
-3)
twitch has to transcode in real time on demand, youtube transcodes using spare google compute power with little to no expectation of speed. sometimes it takes 8 hours sometimes it takes 8 minutes, you get what you get, thats how they save
ive often wondered why twitch even offers real time streaming to 8 viewer streamers.... if it was delayed by 30 seconds for 50% of the cost, would anyone care??
Upvote
75
(82
/
-7)
It is, and the worst part is when it is used to justify shareholder returns. If twitch is indeed a money loser then I suppose I can give it a pass, but they really need to get people who know how to communicate in a way that is not so off-putting.
Upvote
32
(33
/
-1)
I think that fundamentally wrong part is the key. All these tech companies are built for growth - not being a sustainable business. This article has 500 layoffs - plus 400 last year. If you can layoff 900 over a year and change, then the scope of the business is all out of whack.
And I am sure that this may depress a bunch of content creators - but it may be that running something like twitch won't ever be profitable and all of the creators need to make less or pay more to broadcast their stuff.
Upvote
40
(42
/
-2)
Podginator
Ars Centurion
Look to some European countries when it comes to Employment Laws.
The Netherlands system is not perfect (1 year probations via 1 year contracts, for instance) - but an eventual guaranteed permanent contract, followed by intensely pro-employee employment laws are incredible.
When Layoffs do happen, a company that cannot prove the necessity are required to either go to court (wherein they are likely to lose) , or to do so by mutual acceptance. What this tends to mean in practice is layoff packages can be up to 1 years salary. I know some Meta employees that worked in recruitment, who not only retained their jobs for much longer than their American counterparts (~up to 1 year), but also got a generous severance when they finally were laid off.
The Netherlands system is not perfect (1 year probations via 1 year contracts, for instance) - but an eventual guaranteed permanent contract, followed by intensely pro-employee employment laws are incredible.
When Layoffs do happen, a company that cannot prove the necessity are required to either go to court (wherein they are likely to lose) , or to do so by mutual acceptance. What this tends to mean in practice is layoff packages can be up to 1 years salary. I know some Meta employees that worked in recruitment, who not only retained their jobs for much longer than their American counterparts (~up to 1 year), but also got a generous severance when they finally were laid off.
Last edited:
Upvote
40
(45
/
-5)
And considering CEO Dan Clancy was in charge of apparently "wrongsizing" to begin with, he's going to own the mistake that deeply affects 500 employees by being part of the exodus, right? Right?
Oh, I forgot that the executive suite is always the right size, how silly.
Upvote
95
(99
/
-4)
If it's still not making money, maybe this shouldn't be a business...? Just sayin'...
Upvote
19
(27
/
-8)
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'm going to throw this out there:
One of the worst effects of the revenue models of the past 30 or so years (particularly the last 15-ish) is that they've led people to expect products and services at costs well below the true cost of the product.
Investment money (at least partially spurred on by unusually low interest rates) in particular allowed for end-costs to be effectively subsidized for all sorts of new products and services, for the purpose of: (a) Getting people into the product/service ecosystems. (b) Eliminating competitors. (c) Rapidly growing the business with the intention of seeing real returns only later down the line.
Many of the significant products and services of the past couple of decades were paid for in part by what were more-or-less quasi-loans - and without any further investment money, those payments have to start coming from somewhere.
One of the worst effects of the revenue models of the past 30 or so years (particularly the last 15-ish) is that they've led people to expect products and services at costs well below the true cost of the product.
Investment money (at least partially spurred on by unusually low interest rates) in particular allowed for end-costs to be effectively subsidized for all sorts of new products and services, for the purpose of: (a) Getting people into the product/service ecosystems. (b) Eliminating competitors. (c) Rapidly growing the business with the intention of seeing real returns only later down the line.
Many of the significant products and services of the past couple of decades were paid for in part by what were more-or-less quasi-loans - and without any further investment money, those payments have to start coming from somewhere.
Upvote
138
(138
/
0)
It it's not easy to cut staff then it will make companies less likely to hire in the good times.
That's how you get the 20%+ youth unemployment of most EU countries.
Upvote
-19
(26
/
-45)
Yep, haven’t had that since 2015, they’re absolutely terrible to their employees and they destroyed small businesses.
Upvote
7
(13
/
-6)
At minimum, I’d like to see a law where companies have to choose between requiring non-competes or being eligible for layoffs. If you want to respond to market conditions by firing a quarter of your workforce, then your workforce should be able to respond to market conditions by freely moving to your competitors.
Upvote
41
(43
/
-2)