Twitch Faces Challenges Under New Leadership Following CEO Resignation and Layoffs

Source: Twitch

Emmett Shear, Twitch's CEO, has resigned from his position after leading the live streaming platform for 11 years. Shear cited his desire to spend more time with his family as the reason for his departure. He will remain as an advisor for the platform, while current Twitch President Dan Clancy will take over as CEO.

However, just days after the announcement, parent company Amazon laid off 400 Twitch employees, which accounts for about 20% of its workforce. These changes, from leadership to the workforce to the product roadmap, are creating a lot of upheaval for Twitch.

While creators have been eagerly anticipating a change in Twitch's relationship with them, Shear's departure and Clancy's takeover may not have as much impact as hoped. In fact, some of the moves that have led to a strained relationship with creators were delivered by Clancy himself, including the controversial change in the revenue split between the platform and creators, resulting in some creators being less optimistic.

On the other hand, Twitch has some positive developments on the horizon. 2023 is shaping up to be a good year for the platform, with a long list of new product updates that it plans to experiment with and launch throughout the year. To keep things going, Clancy would be wise to take YouTube’s new CEO Neal Mohan’s approach of meeting with creators to understand their needs, which could be helpful in making Twitch more creator-friendly.