Twitch CEO Dan Clancy shared a blog on Twitch with news that Twitch will shut down in South Korea on February 2024. The closure is due to the cost of keeping Twitch active in the country. It's not entirely clear at this point if "shutting down" means that people in South Korea can simply no longer monetize and stream on the platform or if the website in its entirety will no longer be available.

Quote From Dan Clancy

This morning, I shared with our community in Korea that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in Korea on February 27, 2024 KST. We understand that this is extremely disappointing news, and we want to explain why we made this decision and how we are planning to support those impacted.

Ultimately, the cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive and we have spent significant effort working to reduce these costs so that we could find a way for the Twitch business to remain in Korea. 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. Twitch has been operating in Korea at a significant loss, and unfortunately there is no pathway forward for our business to run more sustainably in that country.

To all of our global communities, we want to make it clear that this is a unique situation. Operating costs in Korea are significantly higher than they are in other countries and we have been open about this challenge for some time.

Twitch streamers in Korea have devoted significant time and effort into building their communities, and we plan to help these communities find new homes — even if it’s regrettably not on Twitch. We will work to help Twitch streamers in Korea move their communities to alternative livestreaming services in Korea. We are also reaching out to several of these services to help with the transition and will communicate with impacted streamers as those discussions progress.

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.

For more information, please see our Help article or join our live stream where I’ll be taking the community’s questions. We will host a stream for our Korean community on /TwitchKR today, December 6 at 9:30 am KST (December 5, at 4:30pm PT). For people outside of the Korean community, I will host another session on /Twitch today, December 6 at 11am KST (December 5, at 6pm PT) to answer questions about this decision or other topics.

Dan Clancy, Twitch CEO

According to the aforementioned Help article at the end of Dan's tweet, South Koreans streamers will receive their final payout from Twitch on March 16th (in KST), and any affiliates and partners will be off-boarded from the platform on June 4th. The article also contains a number of frequently asked questions.

Quote From Twitch

As a streamer outside of Korea who has viewers/subscribers in Korea, what will happen to my subs?

Twitch will notify streamers outside Korea via email that they may experience a change in revenue if they receive significant support from users in Korea.

On February 27th, 2024, active recurring single-month and multi-month subscriptions held by viewers in Korea will be set to Do Not Renew. After February 27th, 2024, viewers in Korea will be unable to purchase new Subs, Gift Subs or Bits.

 

I am a monetized streamer who no longer resides in Korea. What steps do I need to take?

If you currently reside outside of Korea and have selected Korea as your country of residence during onboarding, make sure you re-complete your onboarding to update your information with your new country of residence.

If you still reside in Korea, do not attempt to re-onboard to the Affiliate or Partner programs. After December 6th, 2023 KST, Korea will not be available for selection as a country of residence during onboarding.

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