(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Twitch has confirmed that Amazon will acquire the company later in 2014. The deal has been approved by Twitch's shareholders. Amazon will acquire all of Twitch's outstanding shares "for approximately $970 million in cash" by the end of the year.

In a You must login or register to view this content. addressed to the Twitch community, CEO Emmett Shear wrote, “Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming. Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community. We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently. This change will mean great things for our community, and will let us bring Twitch to even more people around the world.”

Shear will remain the CEO of Twitch, and the company will become a fully owned subsidiary of Amazon, and he said the company's mission will not change. "We 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. We’re keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch."

It was only a few months ago that Google was rumored to be purchasing Twitch for $1 billion, though the rumors had never been confirmed.

For the uninitiated, Twitch is a platform for making and talking about videos of videogame play. About a million users a month record themselves playing videogames, while the rest — pegged at 50 million unique viewers in July — watch and comment on the videos. In January, Twitch reported that 58 percent of its viewers spent more than 20 hours per week on the site. It originated as an offshoot of a general-purpose live video site, Justin.tv, but in time surpassed its original home; earlier this month, Twitch said Justin.tv would shut down.


UPDATE:Google was unable to close the deal, because it was concerned about potential antitrust issues that could have come with the acquisition. The Mountain View, Calif. company already owns YouTube, the world’s most-visited content streaming site, which competes with Twitch to broadcast and stream live or on-demand video game sessions. One source noted that because of the concerns, Google and Twitch could not come to an agreement on the size of a potential breakup fee in case the deal did not go through. The breakup fee is a sum paid to one company or the other if an acquisition falls apart.

I'm glad someone bought Twitch, personally I would have preferred Google. As a streamer and someone who knows many high profile streamers I hope that Amazon can greatly improve the service. Some of the current Twitch servers cannot handle the bandwidth and a lot of streams suffer because of it.

Without further ado, I welcome our new Amazon overlords.

That's good lol. Amazon could invent some technology to livestream from gaming devices to Twitch and make it more easier :p.

Right, Amazon buying Twitch is a way better option than Google buying it, in my opinion. This deal is great for both viewers and streamers.

This is good as I never had any bad experiences with them and I know they are competing with Google so theres 90% chance they won't fuck it up

Yes, and I'm not the only streamer who wouldn't have cared if Google purchased Twitch. Prior to Amazon purchasing Twitch there was a lot of talk about Google purchasing it and UI/Google+ integration was talked about heavily. Obviously no one likes Google+ and what they've done with YouTube, but in terms of server bandwidth it most likely would have improved the experience both for the streamer and the viewer. Plus there could have been a contractual agreement made that prevented Google+ integration and UI changes.

At the end of the day I'm glad someone purchased Twitch, hopefully more non-partnered streamers will receive transcode options, and the servers will be more stable. Because right now the San Francisco, Chicago, and New York servers are constantly having bandwidth issues even with partnered streamers.

If you really wanted you could blame console peasants and their next-gen consoles for a lot of the bandwidth issues with Twitch.

Touche, I wasn't even thinking about that. The discussions among streamers more or less entailed Google+ integration.

Amazon taking over Twitch is rather strange, user made content against their collection is odd.
That said, I can see the tech along with servers being merged a good thing Amazon have a great backbone service.
On top of this should help their streaming service expand the question is are they going to move into live streaming certain content?
Say their new TV show or let the site grow on its own as a home for gamers.

Given the change in copyright policy I hope Amazon can fix it along with improve it so we have a real rival to Google.
Looking forward to what they can do but still worried