Twitch will not be following Amazon’s new major policy – report

Twitch is reportedly not following Amazon’s new major return to office policy, choosing to let employees work from home, unlike Amazon’s other companies.

Return to office (RTO) policies have long been a point of contention for many companies as employees have preferred working from home since 2020’s world events forced some hands.

Activision Blizzard, Apple, and Disney have all mandated varying degrees of RTO policies, to the protest of their employees and unions.

Amazon most recently announced a new RTO policy that seeks to make corporate employees return to the office for five days a week, starting in January 2025.

According to reports, this is a wider push by Amazon to make employees across all subsidiaries, including Audible and One Medical, return to working from the office.

However, it looks like Twitch is the exception as they will not be following the new policies.

As reported by Business Insider, Twitch’s CEO Dan Clancy wrote in a leaked internal email that the streaming giant will not be following the new changes and they do “not apply” to them.

“We have a specific exception, and, as a practical matter that I mentioned in last week’s All Hands, we do not have the space to host all employees in our office spaces,” Clancy said in the email.

It’s unknown just how many employees Twitch has, but it’s clear they do not have the capacity to follow Amazon’s new plans.

However, Clancy’s leaked email did not say if Twitch would ever plan to follow the new RTO rules if they were to get more office space.

Back in January 2024, Twitch laid off 500 employees which was 35% of their total workforce. This layoff was preceded by a 400 employee reduction back in early 2023.

After the mass layoffs, Clancy went on his own Q&A stream to reveal that Twitch isn’t “profitable” and broke down why it needed to happen.