US tech giant Amazon is laying off about 500 Twitch employees, CNBC reports. Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said the layoffs are being made in an effort to “rebuild the company” and make the number of employees match the current size of the business.

“I know many of you are wondering why this is happening. Over the last year, we’ve been working to build a more sustainable business so that Twitch will be here for the long run and throughout the year we have cut costs and made many decisions to be more efficient,” Clancy wrote.

“Unfortunately, despite these efforts, it has become clear that our organization is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business. Last year we paid out over $1 billion to streamers. So while the Twitch business remains strong, for some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we’re at today”, he continued.

In 2014, Amazon acquired Twitch for nearly $1 billion. Following Amazon’s purchase of Twitch, the unit was largely not a priority for the tech giant, despite offering Prime subscribers perks on the live streaming platform, such as free games.

In March last year, Twitch laid off about 400 employees, and last October it laid off several employees in its customer-facing division.

The organization has experienced leadership changes, with Emmett Shear, the longstanding CEO, stepping down in March and passing the reins to Clancy, who had served as Twitch’s president. Additionally, the company witnessed departures from its Chief Customer Officer, Doug Scott, announced late last year, and Chief Content Officer, Laura Lee, who recently announced her exit.

Furthermore, Amazon has recently implemented its most extensive workforce reduction in history, with a staggering 27,000 employees laid off since 2022. These layoffs have been consistent, with the latest announcements affecting the Prime Video and MGM Studios units made on Wednesday.