Seoul, South Korea – Popular streaming platform Twitch has announced that it will be shutting down its operations in the South Korean market by February 27, 2024; citing rising operational costs in the country brought by the country’s prevailing network fee implementation to content providers (CPs) in the country, both domestic and foreign.
In a blog post by Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, he stated that they have put a lot of effort into finding ways to continue operating in the country by reducing costs. It is worth noting that the platform tried experimenting with peer-to-peer (P2P) livestreaming, as well as reducing the maximum video quality output to 720p.
However, the platform noted that despite these measures, the network fees in the country were 10 times higher than in most other countries, making operations no longer feasible. Moreover, Twitch has continued to operate with difficulty in South Korea with significant losses.
Speaking about those that will be affected by the closure, Twitch has stated that it will be working with rival platforms such as AfreecaTV and YouTube to aid creators in the transition process to their platforms.
“I would like to reiterate that this was a very difficult and difficult decision, and one that all of us at Twitch are deeply saddened by. Korea has always been a stellar player in the global esports community and will continue to do so. We’d like to thank you all for your hard work building a great Twitch community,” Clancy said.
It is worth noting that South Korea has an implementation for content provider tech companies to pay a network fee depending on the traffic they generate towards internet service providers (ISPs). This regulation came to international attention when South Korean ISP SK Broadband had sued Netflix over the huge traffic it generated thanks to the popular series “Squid Game”.
