Oh. Well, turns out those rumours of Youtube buying Twitch weren’t true after all. No, it’s the other globe-spanning corporate giant that’s bagged the video streaming website.
Yep, Amazon has purchased Twitch for a very respectable $970 million. Wonder what they plan to do with it?
Amazon has been making inroads into the gaming market for a while, so while it doesn’t seem like a natural fit at first glance, it’s not too surprising they’ve made this move. “Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community,” said Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com.
Twitch sound pretty happy about the whole deal too. “Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming,” said Emmett Shear, CEO of Twitch. “Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community. We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently. This change will mean great things for our community, and will let us bring Twitch to even more people around the world.”
Shear also penned a blog post addressed to fans and users of Twitch. In it, he thanks them for their support and promises that the Amazon partnership will result in an ”even better Twitch”. He also says the company will retain its ”independence”.
Mind you, Twitch has already started blocking, muting and generally disrupting streaming videos from those same valuable fans due to copyright concerns, so maybe it’s not quite the haven for gamers and ‘let’s players’ it purports to be. We’ll soon see how Amazon’s acquisition affects the company’s policies.
