Twitch continues to scale back and this month will mark another step in that journey as they will officially be ceasing its operations in Korea later this month.
Back in December 2023, Twitch made the official announcement on their blog that delivered the bad news to the Korean streamers who utilize their platform:
“After several years of consideration and effort to find a way to continue operating in Korea, Twitch has decided to end its operations in Korea as of February 27, 2024, Korean time.”
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy explained that “The cost of running Twitch in Korea is currently prohibitively high. We have put a lot of effort into finding ways to continue operating in Korea by reducing costs.”
Twitch operations in Korea are scheduled to end on February 27th, 2024 and following that date Korean viewers will no longer be able to purchase Twitch’s paid products and streamers will no longer be able to generate revenue through the Twitch streaming platform.
“We recognize how important it is for streamers and their communities to find new homes like AfreecaTV and YouTube. Therefore, to ensure a smooth transition of the community, we will support streamers to utilize the notification feature (Onsite Message) within the Twitch service and post links to other services. In addition, we plan to discuss with the relevant companies to see if there is anything we can do to help with transferring the community to other services, and we will inform you of any progress in this regard.
Lastly, I would like to reiterate that this was a very difficult and difficult decision, and one that all of us at Twitch are deeply saddened by. Korea has always been a stellar player in the global esports community and will continue to do so. We’d like to thank you all for your hard work building a great Twitch community.”
You can read more at the Twitch official blog.
