On December 6, American video live streaming service Twitch announced that it would leave the South Korean market by February 2024. With 30m daily active users, the Amazon-owned streaming service is the world’s 37th most visited website and the global leader in e-sports broadcasting. The announcement came as a shock in the industry, as South Korea - the birthplace of professional e-sports - represents Twitch’s third-largest market after the United States and Germany.
Twitch blamed South Korea’s lack of net neutrality for the decision. South Korea’s internet service providers are free to charge different rates for different users, and have accordingly charged higher prices for companies that use a large amount of bandwidth. Netflix challenged the pricing scheme through litigation, but ultimately lost in 2021. (See previous coverage, “No Net Neutrality in South Korea: Court.”) In its press release, Twitch noted that South Korea’s network usage fees were 10x other countries’, making operations there unsustainable. In September 2022, Twitch capped video quality in South Korea to 720p in an attempt to reduce network usage fees.
