Twitch has been officially acquired by Amazon, the company’s CEO has announced in a blog post. According to Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, the company chose Amazon “because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster.” For the past couple of months, rumors spread that Google was looking to acquire Twitch for around $1 billion, but those were simply rumors. The company will be keeping most everything the same including its office, employees, brand and independence but looks forward to having Amazon’s support to make the service even better.
Amazon also released a statement regarding the acquisition stating that the company will “acquire all of the outstanding shares of Twitch for approximately $970 million in cash, as adjusted for the assumption of options and other items.” The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2014.
“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,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “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.”
Source: Twitch
