Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin will depart from the company. Lin, who served as the popular streaming platform’s COO from 2008 to 2018, made the announcement in a Medium post.
He recounted his experience with Twitch and thanked everybody involved in Twitch’s journey. Lin did not explicitly state what his next career plans were, but instead commented that he will be “spending time with family and loved ones, some sleep and relaxation, some fitness, and of course, a lot of video games.”
Twitch won’t be Lin’s final adventure in the tech sector, however. He stated, “I’m so excited to stretch my curiosity and to continue exploring a world where technology is a positive amplifier in our lives. I will build again. I hope to create something as remarkable as Twitch again, to build with amazing people who will challenge me, and to make the world we experience better.”
Kevin Lin, Emmett Shear, Justin Kan, Kyle Vogt, and Michael Seibel officially rebranded Justin.tv and launched Twitch in its current incarnation in 2011. Amazon then acquired Twitch in 2014 for nearly a billion dollars, an investment that looks to be paying off. Twitch is central to many gaming communities, and a number of popular gaming personalities sprung to fame from the platform. With the pandemic causing people to stay mostly indoors, individuals other than gamers–such as musicians and artists–also turned to Twitch to connect with their audiences. It seems Twitch has more room to grow and can potentially cultivate an even larger user base.
However, Twitch has faced challenges lately and continues to struggle with copyrighted material on the platform. In early 2020, Twitch received a flurry of DMCA takedown notifications over copyrighted audio. Since then, the company wrestled with creating policies dealing with copyrighted audio, and Twitch creators grappled with adjusting as well. More recently, major music institutions are still dissatisfied with Twitch’s solutions, such as Twitch’s Soundtrack Service for streamers, and want the platform to do more. In any case, it appears Twitch’s conflict with certain music industry organizations is far from over.
