Twitch, a popular American game live broadcast platform, said on Wednesday that it plans to shut down its Korean service at the end of February next year due to excessive network usage fees in South Korea. In an announcement posted on the company's blog, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said the company "has made the difficult decision to shut down Twitch's operations in South Korea on February 27, 2024."
Clancy said the cost of running Twitch in South Korea is "incredibly high" and said the company spent a lot of effort to reduce the cost of doing business, such as adjusting the video quality on the service.
"While we have lowered costs through these efforts, our network in South Korea is still 10 times more expensive than most other countries," Clancy said.
He emphasized that Twitch's operations in South Korea have been operating at a serious loss, and the company believes that "there is no more sustainable development path for our business" in South Korea.
The platform had suspended its video-on-demand service in South Korea in November last year, a move seen as a protest against the country's controversial network usage fees.