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.
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.