Gaming

Twitch Founding CEO Emmett Shear Resigns After 16 Years


Emmett Shear is no longer the boss of Twitch. After 16 long, controversy-filled years, the co-founder and only CEO the Amazon-owned streaming platform has ever known announced he’s stepping down to spend more time with his family.

“With my first child just born, I’ve been reflecting on my future with Twitch,” Shear wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “Twitch often feels to me like a child I’ve been raising as well. And while I will always want to be there if Twitch needs me, at 16 years old it feels to me Twitch is ready to move out of the house and venture alone.”

Shear, who started Twitch with Justin Kan as Justin.tv back in 2007, will be replaced by current Twitch President, Dan Clancy, who arrived at the company as recently as 2019 after long stints at both NASA and Google. Shear said he’ll continue to work with Twitch in an advisory role, but writes that he no longer fears that the platform would die “without my guidance and input.”

Twitch was born when Justin.tv spun its gaming-centric streams off in 2011, and was bought by Amazon in 2014 for just under $1 billion. Since then the platform has grown and changed a ton, with its most popular streamers expanding into content beyond gaming, effectively operating everything from daily talk shows to sketch comedy clubs.

But it’s also come under tons of ongoing scrutiny around creator payment splits, targeted harassment, and streamers profiting off of things like gambling. Twitch outraged many creators last year when it announced the end of special 70/30 splits for top performers. At the time it claimed the revenue changes were the result of higher fees charged by Amazon Web Services, its parent company’s cloud computing money maker.

At the same time, Twitch has been bleeding some of its biggest stars to YouTube. More recently, the platform has tried to address longstanding complaints over controversial features like channel raids and improve moderation and user safety on the platform.

“With the arrival of my son, the time has come for me to focus my energies on building that tiny little startup family, and I’m ready to dedicate my energies there,” Shear wrote today. “Twitch will always remain part of my extended family, a community where I grew in so many ways alongside Twitch itself.”

                  





Source link

Exit mobile version