Losing game
Korean video game streamers might need some consoling this week, after streaming site Twitch announced it will shut down in South Korea in February 2024 due to high operational costs.
Despite South Korea’s flourishing gaming community — the 4th biggest market in the video game industry — the Amazon-owned platform expressed that they could no longer afford to remain in the country. Even with ~100k live channels streaming at any given time on Twitch, as we charted last year, and cost-cutting measures ramping up, Twitch’s CEO expressed that Korea’s high network fees are still “10x more expensive than in most other countries”. For popular South Korean streamers, that could mean a lot of lost income.
