Twitch plans to shut down S. Korea ops

Twitch Interactive CEO Clancy said the company “made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in South Korea on Feb 27, 2024.” — Bloomberg

SEOUL: Twitch, a popular US-based live game streaming platform, says it plans to shut down its South Korean service in February next year due to high network usage fees in the country.

In an announcement posted on its corporate blog, Twitch Interactive Inc chief executive officer Dan Clancy said the company “made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in South Korea on Feb 27, 2024.”

Clancy said the cost to operate Twitch in South Korea was “prohibitively expensive” and said the company spent significant effort, such as adjusting the video quality on the service, to reduce business costs.

“While we have lowered costs from these efforts, our network fees in South Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries,” Clancy said.

He stressed that Twitch has been operating at a significant loss and that the company sees “no pathway forward for our business to run more sustainably” in South Korea. — The Korea Herald/ANN