It’s hard to fathom that Twitch has only been around since 2011. As such, it’s even more difficult to fathom that the company was just sold to Amazon for $970 million. That’s right, Amazon. Not Google. Amazon.
Amazon revealed the truth today via press release, and as per usual concerning any and all things buyout, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sounds tremendously excited.
Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month – from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3. And, amazingly, Twitch is only three years old. 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.
There’s no denying that the pairing of two customer-centric companies will in theory make for a great fit. Still, that word “customer.” It’s a bit scary. Especially when you consider that currently, Twitch doesn’t cost its users anything at all.
Related: Twitch Streaming is Coming to Mobile Gaming
Still, if you trust Twitch CEO Emmett Shear then you can put your fears to rest. Both companies believe in “the future of gaming,” and Amazon’s resources can (hopefully) help bring Twitch to new heights.
Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming. 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.
The timing is definitely good. After all, could Twitch realistically compete with a YouTube-sized competitor sans Amazon’s funding if such an entity decided to get serious about streaming long-term? Still, an outright purchase by Google itself could have been a good fit too. As of today, we’ll never know the answer.
Emmett Shear also posted a rather moving and thoughtful thank-you to the Twitch community — you can check it out in full here.
