While Twitch , the world’s largest digital live broadcast platform , is constantly increasing the number of users, it seems that it will reduce this number with a recent decision. So much so that the company decided to withdraw from South Korea. Here are the details…

Twitch is withdrawing from South Korea!

This decision, announced by CEO Dan Clancy on the Twitch Blog , includes plans to withdraw from South Korea due to the country’s high costs. This statement became a subject of discussion on social media.

According to the information shared by the CEO , Twitch is having difficulty providing service in South Korea due to extremely high costs. Before making this decision, the company first tried to reduce costs. In this context, broadcast quality is limited to the highest 720p.

Although Twitch took steps to reduce costs, these efforts were insufficient. In particular, the fees paid for network services in South Korea are many times higher than in many other countries. This makes providing service very difficult.

Twitch , which continued its service for a while despite making a loss, eventually announced that it was not a sustainable way to provide more services in South Korea . In this context, the company will no longer provide service as of February 27, 2024 .

What will broadcasters in South Korea do now?

Twitch announced that it will help broadcasters in South Korea to switch to a new platform. In this context, it was stated that they are in communication with some companies and that the publishers will be informed when the negotiations are concluded.

The relevant statement of Twitch CEO is as follows;

“I regret to share with our community in Korea this morning that we have made the difficult decision to discontinue our Twitch services in Korea on February 27, 2024. We understand that this is extremely disappointing news.

Therefore, we would like to explain to you why we have made this difficult decision and how we plan to support our members affected by this decision. Essentially, it is extremely costly for Twitch to operate in Korea, and we have made great efforts to reduce these costs to find a way to continue our services in Korea.

We first tried the peer-to-peer model for source quality. We then limited the source quality to the highest 720p. Although we have reduced costs as a result of these efforts, our network fees in Korea are still 10 times higher than in most countries. Twitch incurs a high loss operating its operations in Korea and unfortunately there is no more sustainable way to deliver our services in this country.”

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