It looks like the streaming mega platform Twitch will be closing its doors to Korean streamers for the foreseeable future.
In a recent blog post, Dan Clancy, the CEO of Twitch, spoke about the details as to why they have decided to pull out of the country, and it all boils down to costs.
“Ultimately, the cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive,” said Clancy in his post.
Clancy explained that Twitch experimented with a peer-to-peer source model for quality and also tried to keep the quality at 720p; however, with network costs being ten times more than other countries around the world, no matter what they have tried, Twitch has been operating at a loss in Korea.
With millions of watch hours and viewers between the Korean Twitch communities, Clancy said that they would be offering support to help migrate these communities to other streaming platforms as the streaming service begins to prepare for the shutdown, “even if it’s regrettably not on Twitch”, but there will undoubtedly be communities that are overlooked or not considered big enough to muster support.
While Clancy does try to mention that the situation is unique to Korea, Twitch users out there can’t help but feel concerned as other streaming platforms slowly start to grow outside of Korea as well, challenging the purple giant.
The planned offloading for the platform begins in February next year, where monetisation for Korean streamers will be disabled, and will run into July when partners and affiliates will be “off-boarded”.
For more information on the ins and outs, you can check out the Twitch Help Article.