NEW YORK - Amazon.com’s live-streaming site Twitch is poised to cut 35 per cent of its staff, or about 500 workers, according to people familiar with the plans, the latest in a series of job reductions there.

The cuts, which could be announced as soon as Jan 10, come amid concerns over losses at Twitch and after several top executives left the company in the span of a few months. A Twitch spokesperson declined to comment.

Running a large-scale website supporting 1.8 billion hours of live video content a month is enormously expensive, despite Twitch’s reliance on Amazon’s infrastructure, company executives have said.

In December, Twitch chief executive Dan Clancy said the company would cease operations in South Korea, where the costs are “prohibitively expensive”, according to a blog post he wrote.

Twitch has increased its focus on advertising in recent years. Nine years after Amazon’s acquisition of the company, the business remains unprofitable, according to the people, who asked not to be identified for discussing private information.

In the final months of 2023, several top executives announced their departures, including Twitch’s chief product officer, chief customer officer and chief content officer. Twitch also lost its chief revenue officer, who worked on Twitch from within Amazon’s Ads unit.

“It’s always bittersweet when talented leaders move on to pursue new opportunities,” a Twitch spokesperson said at the time.

“We are incredibly grateful for their contributions to Twitch and our community, and wish them all the best.”

Since he took the position in March 2023, Mr Clancy has been on a cross-country charm offensive to mend relations with the gaming celebrities who make a living streaming on Twitch.

Many of them chafed at Twitch’s original approach to advertisements, which the company reworked after criticism.

Streamers have praised Mr Clancy’s desire to listen to their concerns after years of complaints that the service was out of touch with its users.

The new chief has struggled to stem losses, however. Twitch undertook two rounds of layoffs in 2023, cutting more than 400 positions, part of wider job reductions at Amazon.

The online retail giant initiated its biggest-ever corporate job cuts in 2022, which it expanded to 27,000 positions across the company.

It continued in October with a new round of cuts to its music division, which encompasses the company’s audio streaming platform and digital storefront for songs. BLOOMBERG