Twitch said it plans to shut down its South Korean business on February 27, after finding it “too expensive” to operate in one of the world’s largest esports markets.
in Blog postTwitch CEO Dan Clancy said the company made a “huge effort” to reduce network costs to operate in Korea, but in the end operating fees in Korea were 10 times more expensive than in most other countries. He added that stopping operations in Korea is a “unique situation.”
“First, we piloted a peer-to-peer model for source quality. After that, we adjusted the source quality to a maximum of 720p. Although we succeeded in reducing costs with these efforts, our network fees in Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most countries.” The other.
The Amazon-owned streaming service said it was operating in Korea at a “significant loss” and there was “no way forward” to run business sustainably in the country. It’s unclear why network fees are so high in South Korea, though Clancy may be alluding to the country’s recent controversial deliberations to require tech companies to pay for network costs.
“I want to reiterate that this was an extremely difficult decision, and we are extremely disappointed that we had to make it. Korea has always been and will continue to play a special role in the international esports community and we are extremely grateful for the communities they have built on Twitch,” Clancy wrote.