Twitch’s new CEO breaks silence about competitors and platform’s future

Dan Clancy, Twitch’s new CEO, discussed the recent mass layoffs at the Amazon-owned platform in his first interview since replacing founding member Emmett Shear in March. The streaming company fired 400 employees after Clancy took over, including positions that were key to keeping the platform safe, according to Bloomberg. The layoffs, however, were necessary to keep Twitch running in the long term, according to Clancy.

“Those were the right moves to help run this business long term for creators,” Clancy said in an interview with Bloomberg reporter Cecilia D’Anastasio. “Ultimately we are here for our creators.”

Clancy joined Twitch in 2019 and has an impressive résumé, having previously worked at Google and NASA. He was Twitch’s president before taking on the CEO position in March as part of a restructuring going on at Amazon, the parent company of the streaming platform. Before being responsible for laying off 400 employees earlier this year, the executive also announced Twitch’s decision to cut the top creators’ share of subscription revenue from 70 percent to 50, which generated an understandable uproar in the community.

The new CEO has been spending time meeting with some of Twitch’s creators to discuss the direction the streaming platform is heading in. He told Bloomberg he’s a fan of leftist political pundit Hasan Piker and is set to visit conservationist streamer Maya Higa in Austin, Texas soon. Part of Clancy’s plans for Twitch is improving the platform’s quality of advertising, which would make both Twitch and creators more money.

Although Twitch seems to still reign supreme in the streaming space for gamers, it has strong rivals in the form of TikTok and YouTube Gaming. The latter has stolen multiple names from Twitch in recent years, such as TimTheTatman, DrLupo, Valkyrae, and CouRage. But that doesn’t seem to disturb Clancy.

“People aren’t just leaving comments and logging off, they’re interacting in a live, synchronous fashion,” Clancy said. “We give a stage to all of our creators, where it’s their stage and they’re engaging with their audience.”

One thing is arguably inevitable, though: Twitch needs to assure it is setting good conditions for streamers. Otherwise, higher-profile names will keep leaving the platform, especially with the rise of new platforms like Kick, which is seeking to establish non-exclusivity deals and getting top names like chess grandmaster Hikaru.