Twitch CEO Emmett Shear resigns after 16 years at livestreaming site

The CEO of Twitch, Emmett Shear, has announced that he is leaving the platform, marking the end of more than decade working with the now Amazon-owned livestreaming site.

Outlined in a farewell post, Shear says his work with Twitch actually began in 2006, back before the site was even called Justin.tv.

Citing the birth of his first child, Shear says the decision will allow him to focus on his family and tackle new challenges.

However, while he is leaving his CEO position, Shear does plan to continue to work with Twitch in an “advisory role.”

In October 2006 we started working on live video for the internet. That became Twitch. More than 16 years later, I'm now a father and ready to move to my next phase of life. I wrote a blog post, but the short version is: thank you so much to everyone who built this with me.

— Emmett Shear (@eshear) March 16, 2023

Replacing Shear will be Dan Clancy, the current Twitch President.

“Dan Clancy, our current President, has been a close partner to me these past few years. He will step fully into the role of CEO, effective immediately,” Shear confirmed. “He cares deeply about the Twitch community, its streamers, and our staff and understands what makes Twitch, Twitch.”

In his farewell blog post, the outgoing CEO concluded: “I have a deep sense of gratitude as well for all the streamers who trusted us early with their content and their communities, and all the streamers who have continued to do so to this day.

“I know some of you may find it hard to believe, but supporting as many of you as well as possible is the number one goal for everyone at Twitch and always has been. I also want to thank Amazon for being the best acquirer I could have hoped for. Amazon truly supported us and really allowed a product as different as Twitch the room to grow and to be itself.

“Thank you, everyone, for your support, your critical thoughts, your trust, and your help. We built something great.”

Emmett Shear’s time as Twitch CEO

Emmett has been the CEO of Twitch since 2011, a total of 11 and a half years.

In that time, the site has grown exponentially, with now more than 8 million active streamers a month, and became a fully-owned subsidiary of Amazon in 2014, who paid $970 million for the company.

While Twitch has enjoyed success, becoming the leading platform for video game livestreaming, it has faced increased competition in recent years, particularly from YouTube, Facebook Gaming, and most recently, Kick.

Streamers have criticized Twitch for a lower subscription revenue split than these rivals, and some of the biggest names have left Twitch for these other platforms due to more lucrative deals being on offer.

During Emmett’s time, one of the latest and most controversial announcements was that sub splits would remain at 50/50, much less than YouTube’s 70/30, despite calls from streamers to increase them.

But Twitch also provides other ways for streamers to monetize their content, with a focus on ads primarily. Twitch’s ad incentive program has meant large earnings bumps for some streamers, provided they run a set number of ads each month.

Under Emmett’s time as CEO, it is irrefutable that Twitch has enjoyed many successes, but his successor also faces many challenges, to compete with new rivals, and keep streamers on-side.