Twitch Bids Farewell to South Korea Due to Sky-High Operating Costs; Streamers Host Virtual Farewells

Twitch, a video live-streaming service focused on video game live-streaming, was discontinued in South Korea. It was a sudden exit; thus, users were confused as they scrambled to find new live-streaming platforms to migrate to.

Twitch shut down in Korea on Feb. 27, and Korean streamers immediately held virtual services while wearing black outfits and bowing to framed images of the Twitch logo. The term “Twitch Funeral” also trended on social media, as per Rest of World. Although this was just a joke, it shows that users were deeply affected by the pullout of the platform.

Cause of Twitch’s Departure

Twitch has 300,000 daily viewers in South Korea, and the top Korean streamers typically attract millions of followers. They continue to stream as they rely on the platform to earn money but are helpless now after Amazon withdrew from the platform.

In any case, it was reported that Twitch’s chief executive officer, Dan Clancy, pointed to the region’s high network fees as the main reason for their decision to end the service. He said that the cost of operating in the country had become “prohibitively expensive” since the regulations are also stringent aside from the fee.

Why Twitch’s Korea Operations are Expensive

According to The Verge, operating Twitch in South Korea is costly because of the tax on high bandwidth services. It has the “sender pays” rule implemented by the nation’s Ministry of Science and ICT in 2016. Under this order, companies are required to compensate the receiving networks for the traffic they send.

This rule is said to have been designed to tax heavy traffic senders such as YouTube and Netflix. The fees for live-streaming platforms like Twitch are exceptionally high because low latency is crucial for live content.

Photo by: Caspar Camille Rubin/Unsplash