Twitch Says ANZ Is A Critical Market, But It Has A Funny Way Of Showing It

On Wednesday night, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy sat down with four creators from Australia and New Zealand for a Q&A stream. The creators involved – 8bitElliot, JackHuddo, Carla, and Trash – were free to throw questions to Clancy and Twitch’s ANZ content director Lewis Mitchell about the state of its Australian business and support for local streamers. 

There’s been a growing restlessness among creators in the ANZ region since a major wave of redundancies in January gutted its Australian operations. Previously clear communications and healthy support that local creators enjoyed before the layoffs have dramatically withered in the months since. Many of Twitch’s bigger local creators have found it harder and harder to draw the company’s attention as it focuses on more populous and lucrative North American and European regions.

Though Clancy stressed at the beginning of the stream that he hoped it would be a fun conversation, the creators came prepared to play hardball. What they were given was two hours of broad assurances that left Australian creators feeling uncertain and unsatisfied.

The future of Twitch ANZ

Trash did not beat around the bush, immediately hitting Clancy with what is, for creators, the obvious question: What is the future of Twitch ANZ? 

It’s clear that the January layoffs – a global reduction of 500 jobs that decimated the ANZ team – have badly damaged Twitch’s operations in ANZ. In the months since, the lines of communication have gone dark. Creators are feeling under-resourced and unloved. What is Twitch doing about this? Does it even care about us anymore?

Clancy’s lengthy answer wasn’t as good at reassuring local creators as it was at covering the company’s arse. What he felt was “tricky to appreciate” about the layoffs was that, from the company’s perspective, Twitch ANZ was over-resourced compared to other regions. "For quite some time, we actually invested, in terms of the number of people working on ANZ, it was quite disproportionate, in terms of the number of creators, the number of partners, the number of streamers, everything."

"A big thing that we’ve been needing to do is kind of look (at) where we’re spending our money and being as efficient as possible, because every dollar we have is the cut we take from streamers’ rev shares. … Don’t take us feeling like there’s less resources as us not caring about ANZ. We do care deeply about Australia and New Zealand, I think it’s a critical market."

Translation: Twitch was spending too much on ANZ and not making its investment back. This comes as no surprise. Despite the massive influence it exerts on the livestreaming space, Twitch is famously unprofitable. In a livestream from January, Clancy admitted that, prior to the layoffs, Twitch had been relying on financial backing from parent company Amazon to remain afloat. The slashing and burning of regional offices, like Twitch ANZ, was done to keep the company from financially bleeding to death.

Asked by JackHuddo about the size of Twitch’s ANZ operations post-layoffs and whether Mitchell was now doing the work of what had previously been an entire team, both Mitchell and Clancy avoided a direct answer. A marketing team was mentioned, but not whether they were ANZ-based or resources allocated from a wider APAC (Asia Pacific) team.

Another answer about Twitch Rivals and its viability in Australia pointed to difficulties offering value to creators while paying the bills. Clancy spoke about how Twitch has been trying to evolve Rivals (the ANZ version of which didn’t even stream on the main Rivals channel) to ensure it brings in the kinds of views required to make it worth Twitch’s while financially. 

This went down like a lead balloon in 8bitElliot’s chat, with creators wondering when the platform will start prioritising community sentiment ahead of metrics. The answer, even if Clancy isn’t able to say so, seems fairly clear: The business reality is that it can’t, not if it wants to survive.

However, Clancy does point out that he isn’t just keeping his eye on the region through the safety of a spreadsheet. The CEO is making several trips to Australia this year. His first was at Dreamhack Melbourne, where he roamed the halls and sounded out larger local creators. He will return in October for back-to-back appearances at PAX Australia and SXSW Sydney. Travel is a big component of Clancy’s role. As he correctly points out, Australia is not terribly easy to get to but he’s making the effort to get down here anyway. 

I will give him this: three trips in a year is more attention than most American CEOs pay us in a lifetime. However, the frequent flier miles need to be backed up with results. The face time is good, but taking feedback gleaned from these trips and doing something with it is better.

A global approach (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere)

Since the January layoffs, many ANZ creators have noticed support from Twitch HQ drying up. Communication between Twitch and creators had become slower and more difficult. The transparency Twitch ANZ offered local creators around which new programs were geolocked was gone. Even the company’s local social media channels, which had been used to promote channels of all sizes, had gone dark.

Mitchell chimed in to note that Twitch ANZ socials were firing up again and that promotion would continue (though appears Twitch has contracted an external agency for help).

Answers around creator programs excluding ANZ creators were considerably murkier. According to Mitchell, programs like Twitch Ambassadors are being rolled out in larger markets before they can be rolled out in smaller ones like ANZ. This is an inversion of the previous strategy, where markets like ANZ were used as test beds precisely because of their smaller population. Curiously, Clancy puts this down to various languages and cultures, with the company focusing on English-language streamers in regions like APAC. According to Clancy, certain programs can’t "scale globally" (i.e. work in every region, due to cultural sensitivities or legislative concerns). 

Even requests for smaller community programs, like a Twitch Unity Guild dedicated to First Nations and Torres Strait Islander creators were met with a similar response: we’d love to some day, and we’re working on it. Clancy appeared unaware of programs like Twitch ANZ Grassroots, a previous avenue for promoting smaller creators and affiliates.

Clancy then went on to say that his wider strategy revolves around putting money back in creators’ pockets, like lowering the threshold for entering the revenue sharing Plus Program, but did not get into any further specifics.

Even things like booths at shows like PAX have been de-emphasised. Twitch is not alone in this, many major parties in the games industry have been attempting to move away from conventions like PAX in an effort to save money. In Twitch’s case, it moved toward officially sanctioned Gatherings to give creators IRL spaces to socialise and network. Carla immediately disputed this, pointing out how successful the Twitch booth at PAX Australia had been in 2023, well beyond what local Gatherings had been able to accomplish. Clancy appeared unmoved, but admitted in regions as far-flung as ANZ there is a case for retaining the convention booth strategy.

Broadly, what Clancy and Mitchell are saying makes sense as a business case, but it also makes it clear what the layoffs have cost Twitch streamers in ANZ. In 2023, ANZ was using its resources to thrive. Now, we’re bundled up with much larger, more populous, far more important markets, and it shows. Despite Clancy’s insistence that we remain an important market, and his own regular visits, ANZ has plainly been shuffled down the order of priority.

Though Clancy stressed at the beginning of the stream that he hoped it would be a fun conversation, the creators came prepared to play hardball. What they were given was two hours of broad assurances that left Australian creators feeling uncertain and unsatisfied.

Live ANZ reaction

As the chat went on, sentiment from creators watching the stream began to roll in online, and few were feeling positive.

Here, the division between the needs of the region and the needs of the business are cast in black and white. Local creators want more, they want to be taken seriously and given the opportunities of their contemporaries in larger markets. That’s a fair request, but it seems clearer than ever that Twitch can’t help them without spending money it may not have.

Where to now?

For Twitch, Australia has become the same problem it has been to so many American companies: a region too small and underpopulated to worry about when money’s tight. Though I’m sure Clancy meant every nice thing he said about us as a region, his responses paint a picture of a company with too many masters and no money with which to serve their increasingly complex needs. It’s a battle that can’t be won – creators who’ve turned to the platform as a way to make a living are at odds with a company that cannot seem to turn a profit.

If Twitch hopes to take a global view of what it can offer creators and viewers alike, then it needs to ensure that every region gets a fair shake, not just those in the Northern Hemisphere. That feels like it goes without saying, but as Australians know, Americans rarely think about anything that goes on below the equator.

In the end, creators can only hope that the chat gave Clancy something to think about. And if it didn’t, he will hear about it in person in Sydney and Melbourne this October.

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