Twitch CEO Emmett Shear to step down, president Clancy to take over

(Reuters) -Amazon.com Inc-owned Twitch’s Emmett Shear will step down as chief executive officer after over 16 years at the live video streaming platform that he co-founded, he said on Thursday.

President Dan Clancy, who has been at Twitch since 2019, will take on the role of CEO effective immediately, Shear said in a blog post, adding that he will remain on as an advisor.

Twitch, which has seen online celebrities like Tyler “Ninja” earn millions of dollars playing games and chatting with fans, has come under fire in recent months over reducing the amount of money its biggest streamers could earn from subscriptions, which earlier amounted to as much as 70% of revenue from fans’ subscriptions to their channels.

The company’s chief of global creators, Constance Knight, also left the firm last year, according to media reports.

Then, in September, the company tweaked the policy and announced it would allow its biggest creators to retain their 70% of the revenue share for the first $100,000 earned and then split to the standard 50% share.

“In October 2006 we started working on live video for the internet. That became Twitch. More than 16 years later, I’m now a father and ready to move to my next phase of life,” Shear tweeted on Thursday.

Shear co-founded live streaming platform Justin.tv which became Twitch in 2011 and quickly gained traction in the gaming community as it let viewers message players and each other during live play.

Three years later, it was acquired by Amazon for just under $1 billion.

Incoming top boss Clancy held senior roles at U.S. space agency NASA, Nextdoor and Google prior to joining Twitch.

(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)