This morning, I shared with our community in Korea that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down the Twitch business in Korea on February 27, 2024 KST. We understand that this is extremely disappointing news, and we want to explain why we made this decision and how we are planning to support those impacted.
Ultimately, the cost to operate Twitch in Korea is prohibitively expensive and we have spent significant effort working to reduce these costs so that we could find a way for the Twitch business to remain in Korea.
Yeah, and it all started from a lawsuit between SK Telecom and Netflix because in 2020 people watching Squid Games in Korea used an unprecedented amount of bandwidth. Reuters article
Most telecom providers make deals with the big platforms regarding payment, but I guess S. Korea really wants Afreeca to be the only player in the streaming space. It could also be chaebol shenanigans.
Companies don’t just want to make a profit, they want to make the largest profit. Plenty of businesses turn down profitable ventures in pursuit of more lucrative returns.
Why would they do that if they aren’t mutually exclusive to one another? I’d get this notion if they’d started to do some sort of alternate way of providing for the SK market where their original platform would have been in the way but why close off profitable branches for no reason at all?
Damn I didn’t know it was 10x the cost. Crazy how a company that size still can’t handle the fees.
more a matter of “don’t wanna” than “can’t”
I also didn’t know that South Korea charges extra for foreign content providers which is also pretty aggressive.
Yeah, and it all started from a lawsuit between SK Telecom and Netflix because in 2020 people watching Squid Games in Korea used an unprecedented amount of bandwidth. Reuters article
Most telecom providers make deals with the big platforms regarding payment, but I guess S. Korea really wants Afreeca to be the only player in the streaming space. It could also be chaebol shenanigans.
There’s no “don’t wanna” unless there’s a “can’t” due to not being able to make a profit. If they could they would. It’s simple as that.
Companies don’t just want to make a profit, they want to make the largest profit. Plenty of businesses turn down profitable ventures in pursuit of more lucrative returns.
Why would they do that if they aren’t mutually exclusive to one another? I’d get this notion if they’d started to do some sort of alternate way of providing for the SK market where their original platform would have been in the way but why close off profitable branches for no reason at all?
Because an organization or person only has so much bandwidth and attention. You can’t infinitely scale to grab every bit of profit.
“Tripping over dollars to pick up pennies.”
While true, that’s not exactly relevant when it’s a choice between losing a lot of money and not losing a lot of money.
10x the cost of what tho? They just say “most other countries”, but tahts just spin and essentially meaningless without more data