Visitors stream computer games online at the Twitch Interactive booth at the Gamescom video game fair in Cologne, Germany.
Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Emmett Shear, CEO of Amazonlive streaming service Twitch is stepping down with immediate effect, the company announcement THURSDAY.
Amazon acquired Twitch for nearly $1 billion in 2014. The site is best known as a popular live streaming platform for video gamers. After buying Twitch, Amazon largely let go of the business, although it did offer Prime subscribers perks on the live-streaming platform, such as free games and in-game loot.
Shear will be replaced by Twitch President Dan Clancy, who has been a “close partner” to Shear, he wrote. in a blog post. Shear said he is stepping away to spend more time with his newborn son. Shear will continue to work at Twitch in an advisory role.
“With the arrival of my son, the time has come for me to focus my energies on building this tiny family of startups, and I’m ready to pour my energies into it,” Shear wrote. “Twitch will always be part of my extended family, a community where I grew up in so many ways alongside Twitch itself.”
Shear’s resignation adds to a recent leadership exodus under CEO Andy Jassy. Earlier this month, Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff announced he was stepping down from the home security subsidiary. Last year, executives overseeing Amazon’s Alexa and hardware research and development group, known as Lab126, left the company. Last July, public policy chief Jay Carney announced he was leaving to join Airbnb, and 23-year-old Amazon veteran Dave Clark stepped down as head of retail the same month.
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