Twitch plans to close down its enterprise in South Korea on February 27, it mentioned, after discovering that working in one of many world’s largest esports markets is “prohibitively expensive.”
In a blog post, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy mentioned the agency undertook a “significant effort” to scale back the community prices to function in Korea, however in the end the charges to function in Korea was nonetheless 10 occasions dearer than in most different international locations. The ceasing of operations in Korea is a “unique situation,” he added.
“First, we experimented with a peer-to-peer model for source quality. Then, we adjusted source quality to a maximum of 720p. While we have lowered costs from these efforts, our network fees in Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries.”
The Amazon-owned streaming service mentioned it has been working in Korea at a “significant loss,” and there was “no pathway forward” to run the enterprise sustainably within the nation. It’s unclear why community charges is so costly in South Korea, although Clancy could be alluding to the recent controversial deliberation within the nation to require tech corporations to pay for community prices.
“I want to reiterate that this was a very difficult decision and one we are very disappointed we had to make. Korea has always and will continue to play a special role in the international esports community and we are incredibly grateful for the communities they built on Twitch,” wrote Clancy.
