(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.

Good. Hopefully the Twitch servers will become more stable as well as reliable as Amazon...ie no DOS'ing.