What’s happening in the “real world” and what’s happening “behind the scenes” are two different things when you’re talking about certain entities. As we’ve seen time and time again with businesses, on the outside, they can seem to be doing fine and are “looking forward to the future. Then, when you dive behind the scenes at the situation, you find out that things are a mess and that things need to change in a hurry. That brings us to Twitch, the popular streaming platform where people do all sorts of things, including playing video games in front of their audience, which can lead to them getting serious money.
We all know of streamers like Ninja, Pokimane, and more who have come to the platform over the years and have a successful fanbase through them. There are Let’s Play shows, variety gaming shows like Hang Time, and more out there that pride themselves on making money through their fanbases, which is totally fine!
The catch is that Twitch itself isn’t seeing that same kind of revenue. As noted by Dexerto, some new reports are pointing to the platform not only losing lots of money but also being mismanaged during the process. If you recall, the service lost a lot of employees after Amazon laid off hundreds of people. Then, to try and help “make more money,” they increased the amount that people have to pay to subscribe to a streamer’s channel.
However, that doesn’t appear to be enough, as the company is still losing billions of dollars through Twitch, and, thus, employees are getting the feeling that something else might be coming down the pipeline their way, and they’re very nervous about it.
This is further bolstered by the Wall Street Journal, which noted that while people are still spending money on the platform, the people who spend the most there aren’t spending what they used to. Plus, the engagement rate is going down because fewer people are joining the platform than before. According to them, Twitch is losing about two billion dollars a year! For context, Amazon bought the platform for one billion a decade ago. Granted, it likely made a profit in those first few years after its purchase, but it’s losing money now, and that’s why many are dubbing it a “zombie” brand, as it’s both alive…but kind of dead.
As if this wasn’t enough, the CEO of the company is more concerned with hanging out with the streamers than trying to find ways to improve the company’s status. Not cool!
