• Employees at Twitch are concerned that more layoffs may be on the way.
• The company hasn’t turned a profit in a decade and recent growth is slowing.
• Amazon bought Twitch for $1 billion in 2014 and officially says that the platform still has potential for to grow.

Despite the popularity and almost ubiquity streaming platform Twitch enjoys being connected to seemingly everything gaming, the company has yet to make any profit and has reported that user growth is slowing down instead of picking up.

What does that mean for its owner Amazon, which forked out $1 billion for the platform in 2014?

It’s nothing good that’s for sure, as per a Wall Street Journal report, workers at Twitch are worried that more layoffs are on the way. The platform remains unprofitable after 10 years of on-and-off periods of spiking popularity, and more bad news is clear as documents show that the biggest-paying users on Twitch are becoming less likely to fork out money.

The platform already suffered two rounds of layoffs and now a third may be in the works if things don’t turn around soon, which it doesn’t currently look like it will. Officially, Amazon says that Twitch still has potential and the platform still attracts millions of users every day, but no money is being made after a decade of operations.

“I’ll be blunt, we aren’t profitable at this point,” said Twitch CEO Dan Clancy earlier this year.

“Amazon is being extremely supportive of Twitch and a big thing on being sustainable over time is that we don’t lose money. And that’s a big part of my job because that’s going to make sure we’re going to be here long term,” he added.

It took Uber 14 years to finally turn a profit, but by that point the mobility business had become a way of life for millions of people across the globe. Meanwhile, Twitch just doesn’t have nearly the same reach and rivals like Kick and YouTube Streaming present obstacles, especially as Kick cuts corners to monetize content as much as possible, like allowing gambling.

YouTube Streaming is backed by Google, an offshoot of the super-profitable YouTube platform, and while it isn’t nearly as popular as Twitch in terms of users, it often poaches popular creators away from Twitch for record-setting money deals.

So what can Twitch do in this situation? The company is already embarking on a number of changes, centred around its mobile app. Some of these changes seemingly turn the app into a TikTok-like platform, where streamers are offered through short clips similar to reels.

Another decision that received mixed reviews, is to allow more explicit content on the platform through a filter that blurs thumbnails of streams.

Clancy is also working closer with streamers at Twitch, flying around the globe to meet with them in person. These trips were received with some controversy, with detractors in the company itself, claiming that they were joy rides and free dinners.

“If I was running a manufacturing company I would be meeting with the companies that provided us raw materials as well as the companies that we sold our widgets to,” Clancy wrote in the email, trying to explain his actions.

“Our streamers serve a similar role to Twitch.”

[Image – Photo by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash]