Since the beginning of the year, six top executives alongside over 60 employees have left Twitch following a confrontation regarding the direction to take with the company, Bloomberg reports. Three of the six executives include the head of creator development, the chief content officer, and the chief operating officer. This news comes after over 300 employees left in 2021.
Several employees that are with and have left the company indicated that there is a clear issue: a lack of listening to the community. Twitch has been criticized in the past for not doing enough for its creators and that has seemingly led to the departures that we are now learning about.
The former head of creator development Marcus “DJ Wheat” Graham left the company in January, revealing that Twitch “went down the Silicon Valley route — hiring from Facebook, from Twitter,” and that those who came into the company were “unwilling to learn what this community was, why it was special.”
The executive departures have not helped the situation as a former employee has shared “Twitch’s leadership is uncomfortable with mid-level and lower-level employees pushing for change.” Despite this, a spokesperson emailed the staff declaring that “The common thread for all employees is a drive to serve our community…”
Twitch CEO Emmett Shear declined to comment regarding the situation, as did former CCO Sara Clemens and COO Michael Aragon.
