Twitch is shutting down in South Korea due to excessive operating costs, the streaming giant has announced. South Korea has a unique policy as of 2016 that essentially requires companies to pay for customers consuming content, and the higher the volume of traffic, the more costly it is to operate.
South Korean Twitch streamers to lose income due to the service shutting down
South Korea is one of the biggest streaming markets, so Twitch’s “difficult” decision to shut down due to “prohibitively expensive” operating costs will leave a large number of streamers out of a job and income. PS5 owners will no longer be able to stream on Twitch either, but they should still be able to watch international content. For its part, Twitch is making an effort to move streamers to other platforms operating in the country, but how successful that endeavor will be remains to be seen.
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said that the company made several efforts to reduce costs and avoid a shutdown, but to no avail. He also revealed that Twitch has been making “significant” losses in the country.
“While we have lowered costs from these efforts, our network fees in Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries,” Clancy wrote. “Twitch has been operating in Korea at a significant loss, and unfortunately there is no pathway forward for our business to run more sustainably in that country.”
