Amazon has just announced that they have purchased Twitch for $970 million, beating out Google who was also vying for the deal.
Amazon has offered the video game streaming site $970 million in cash and it seems that the offer has been accepted.
“Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community,” announced CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos.
Google was initially trying to acquire Twitch to add to their YouTube services however rumors are suggesting that they lost out over anti-trust issues.
According to sources, Twitch was concerned that aligning with YouTube would have made a video streaming monopoly and could hinder the company’s performance.
Amazon on the other hand, who is expanding their live streaming services appeared to be a much better fit and will help drive the company to compete with services such as Netflix.
This new merger will also give Amazon access to tens of millions of young gamers and help to expand their reach.
CEO of Twitch Emmet Shear stated, “they (Amazon) believe in our community, they share our values and long term vision and they want to help us get their faster. We’ve created a whole new kind of career that lets people make a living sharing their love of games. We’ve bought billions of hours of entertainment, laughter, joy and the occasional rage quit. I think we can all call that a pretty good start.”
Twitch is currently the 15th most visited site in the world.