Twitch’s CEO, Emmett Shear, is stepping down after 16 years

Emmett Shear is leaving his position as CEO at Twitch. via Twitter on Thursday. Shear joined the Amazon-owned streaming platform livestreaming in its inception. He has also been the company’s only CEO for more than 16 years. He is succeeded by Twitch’s president, Dan Clancy who took over as CEO immediately after he announced his resignation.

Shear shared a Twitter blog posting in which he expressed his desire to have more time with his son and to give him more effort and time. Shear will still be an advisor to the company.

“It’s hard to put into words how much Twitch has been for me. Twitch is a community place for viewers and streamers, as well as for me. Twitch has been like my family, the place I’ve spent more of my waking hours than anywhere else. With the arrival of my son, the time has come for me to focus my energies on building that tiny little startup family, and I’m ready to dedicate my energies there,” Shear said in a tweet thread containing images with text.

In his resignation blog post, Shear talked about the platform’s history, his personal connection, likening the startup to a “family.” You can read the full thread below.

Justin.tv was created by Emmett Seibel and Michael Seibel in 2007 under the name Justin.tv. Kan livedstreamed his entire day live for 24 hours every day and seven days per week. This was the beginning of the content stunt. The stunt didn’t work out, but it unearthed an appetite for livestream content and the same year the company announced it would be opening itself for anyone to livestream.

The team started Twitch.tv in 2011 to focus on video games. The company was rebranded as Twitch Interactive in 2014 after Amazon purchased the platform for $1B. Livestreaming saw an explosion after the Covid-19 pandemic. Shear claims that there are now over 8 million streams per month.

Shear’s resignation comes at a precarious time for the platform. A batch of popular streamers — including top names like Ludwig, DrLupo — have left the platforms after accepting deals at its competitor, YouTube. On top of that, Pokimane, who chose to stick with Twitch, later announced in September that she wouldn’t be leaving the platform, but that she would be streaming less.

These exits are due to a host of policy issues that surround streaming on the platform. In September, the company said it would reduce the revenue share for top streamers to 5% and increase its revenue share from 70%/30 to 50%. Top streamers also criticized the platform for its lax policy regarding gambling content. Twitch had to also respond to the deepfake scandal and updated its non-consensualexploitation images policies in March.

Considering everything that’s happened, it’s looking like Dan Clancy’s plate will be more than full as he enters the position of the new CEO.