Amazon Acquires Twitch for Nearly $1 billion

Wholesaler, tech giant and Kindle-maker Amazon made a $970 million dollar acquisition of video game live-streaming website Twitch last Monday. Twitch is a website devoted to allowing video gamers to live-stream themselves playing video games so others can watch and share the experience. They have even pushed for some unique practices, including playing and finishing games such as Pokémon as a community (which is so awesome).

“Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a press release.

The three-year-old venture hopes to gain a lot from having Amazon's power to back them up. Amazon has been venturing into the growing video game market for a few years now as it has acquired video game developers and published its own Facebook and mobile games (though I can't say I've played any of them).

"Today, I’m pleased to announce we’ve been acquired by Amazon," Twitch CEO Emmett Shear said in his own release. "We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We’re keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch."

Shear says "chose" because the company was recently rumored to have been sought by YouTube (Google) for a $1 billion bid as well. The autonomy that it seems Amazon will allow Twitch to keep should keep the company pushing forward with its massive growth. Twitch has more than 55 million visitors per month and garnered 1 million monthly broadcasters earlier this year.   Photo by: soumit