Twitch CEO Dan Clancy defends trips & dinners with streamers amid employee backlash

Twitch’s CEO, Dan Clancy, has defended his trips abroad and dinners with streamers in response to backlash from employees amid the company’s reported financial losses.

A June email obtained and reviewed by the Wall Street Journal is taking the Twitch sphere by storm, allegedly showing Clancy explaining his expenses to disgruntled employees.

“If I was running a manufacturing company, I would be meeting with the companies that provided us raw materials, as well as the companies that we sold our widgets to,” he wrote. “Our streamers serve a similar role to Twitch.”

The Journal states that employees at the live-streaming company have been unhappy with Clancy’s jetsetting excursions as of late, which follow multiple layoffs and statements from Clancy himself about the company’s monetary struggles.

In November 2022, Amazon laid off around 10,000 workers, letting go of 8,000 more in January 2023. In March of that same year, Amazon laid off an additional 9,000 staffers – which included 400 Twitch employees – and another 500 Twitch workers were let go in early 2024.

Following those layoffs, Clancy admitted that Twitch wasn’t “profitable” in a brutally honest Q&A livestream.

“In terms of making the decision, we need to make sure Twitch is the right size so we can be here for a long time,” he said. “We have a very important mission. It’s critical Twitch is not just here today, tomorrow, but 50 years, 100 years from now.

“Our job is to run Twitch in a manner to ensure its prosperity and that it can be here for the communities you’ve built.”

In fact, the WSJ reports that Amazon continues to see little financial gain after purchasing Twitch for $1 billion in 2014, with insiders worrying the platform will become a “zombie brand” like Goodreads.

In light of this information, workers have taken notice of Clancy’s trips to streamer-focused events like TwitchCon, which reportedly included “medium-sized dinners” with broadcasters, as per the WSJ.

Although he’s gone viral from time to time thanks to these engagements with the Twitch community, some employees feel the discrepancy isn’t a good look, given the company’s supposedly dire financial straits.

However, Clancy’s changes to the platform have received praise from viewers and streamers alike, with Mizkif calling him the “best thing to happen to Twitch in years.”

Clancy has made an effort to connect with streamers on a personal basis, even responding to calls to unban broadcasters like Adin Ross and helping out attendees in a pinch at TwitchCon, but it doesn’t look like these moments are swaying critical workers who feel their CEO should cut back on expenses.