The Twitch layoffs are just a part of the more than 9,000 positions eliminated from Amazon today.
The purple Twitch logo on a white background.

On Monday, Amazon announced plans to cut another 9,000 positions from areas including Amazon Web Services (AWS), human resources, advertising, and Twitch. The additional 9,000 layoffs are planned to be completed by the end of April and follow the 18,000 people that have already been laid off from Amazon from December 2022 through January 2023.

Amazon says that these layoffs account for just 3% of its entire workforce. Of the 9,000 people being laid off, over 400 of them come from Twitch. New Twitch president Dan Clancy put up a blog announcing the layoffs earlier today.

Today I shared with Twitch employees that we’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our workforce, which results in us having to say goodbye to just over 400 people. As a company focused on building community together, this decision was incredibly difficult and one we did not make without considerable thought.

Our mission at Twitch is to empower communities to create, together. You rely on us to give you the tools you need to build your communities, stream your passions safely, and make money doing what you love. We take this responsibility incredibly seriously and sometimes need to make extremely hard decisions to ensure we protect our business in order for Twitch to be around for a long time.

Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations. In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce.​
Twitch employees impacted by these layoffs may not even know that they are laid off yet. An internal email sent by Dan Clancy to Twitch employees says that those impacted by the layoffs will hear "no later than early next week" whether they still have a job or not. Twitch employees were not told ahead of time about today's layoffs.

In related news, Gamur Group also announced layoffs today. Though the exact number of layoffs has not yet been shared, the reach will be felt far and wide. Gamur Group owns at least 15 separate gaming sites, including the following:
  • Dot Esports
  • Operation Sports
  • Upcomer
  • Gamepur
  • Prima Games
  • Twinfinite
  • Siliconera
  • Pro game guides
  • Gamer Journalist
  • Attack Of The Fanboy
  • Touch Tap Play
  • Destructoid
  • PC Invasion
  • The Escapist
  • Gameskinny​
Like many tech companies hiring during COVID, Gamur Group hired too many, too fast. In a statement, Gamur Group says, "Since the start of 2022, we have more than tripled our full-time headcount from 55 to 171 people with the majority in content and editorial." Their statement continues to note that the company "moved too broadly and without the right protective measures in place."

Gamur Group also notes that "approximately 35% of the content we were producing was driving less than 10% of our web traffic." Noting that "whilst content will underperform regularly, we cannot maintain such a high level of inefficiency (1 in 3 articles at present)."

A Google Doc floating around with the names and socials of those laid off today from Gamur Group indicate that roughly 50 employees and contract workers across those 15 outlets were let go.