Good morning, everyone! Today, I have some important news to share with our community in Korea. We have made the tough decision to shut down the Twitch business in Korea on February 27, 2024 KST. We understand that this may come as disappointing news, and we want to explain our decision and how we plan to support those affected.
Operating Twitch in Korea has become increasingly expensive, making it unsustainable for us. We’ve put in a lot of effort to try and reduce these costs, such as experimenting with different models and adjusting quality settings. However, our network fees in Korea are still 10 times higher than in most other countries. Unfortunately, Twitch has been operating in Korea at a significant loss, and there’s no viable way for us to continue doing so.
It’s important to note that the situation in Korea is unique, with significantly higher operating costs than in other countries. We’ve been upfront about this challenge for some time.
We understand that many Twitch streamers in Korea have put in a lot of time and effort into building their communities. We are committed to helping these communities find new homes, even if it’s not on Twitch. We will assist Twitch streamers in Korea to move their communities to alternative livestreaming services in the country. We are also in talks with these services to facilitate the transition and will keep the impacted streamers informed.
I want to emphasize that this was a very tough decision for us, and we are disappointed that it has come to this. Korea has always played a special role in the international esports community, and we are incredibly grateful for the communities they have built on Twitch.
For more information, please see our Help article or join our live stream where I’ll be taking the community’s questions. We will host a stream for our Korean community on /TwitchKR today, December 6 at 9:30 am KST (December 5, at 4:30pm PT). For people outside of the Korean community, I will host another session on /Twitch today, December 6 at 11am KST (December 5, at 6pm PT) to answer questions about this decision or other topics.
Dan Clancy, Twitch CEO