Twitch is one of the most popular platforms for gaming and other types of streams, with Amazon owning the company. However, it has been announced by the company that it will shut down in a key country.
The country where Twitch is shutting down is South Korea. Twitch announced this on their blog. They said that because of the high fees charged by internet providers in South Korea, it will no longer be possible to run Twitch there.
Internet providers in South Korea charge content companies a lot of money to use their internet connections. Twitch tried some things to reduce these fees, like capping video quality. But the fees in South Korea were still 10 times higher than in most other countries. So Twitch said it is no longer feasible, meaning reasonable, for them to operate there.
Starting February 27th next year, South Korean viewers won’t be able to make purchases on Twitch anymore. Streamers from South Korea also won’t be able to earn money from viewers after that date. Twitch is talking to other sites about moving Korean communities to new platforms. They will also let streamers promote their new sites to keep their audience.
Twitch is not the first big company to leave South Korea over these internet fees. Netflix also had problems with the fees and took internet provider SK Broadband to court over it. They finally settled that issue in September.
