Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch for £595m announced last month has finally been completed.
The closure of the deal was revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week which stated that “On September 25, 2014, Amazon.com, Inc. completed its acquisition of Twitch Interactive, Inc.”
The online retailer had announced its £595 million acquisition of the popular live streaming service on Aug. 25 last month. The announcement has finally put a full stop on earlier rumors that suggested Google was interested in grabbing Twitch.
The acquisition deal is aimed at strengthening Amazon’s video games and live streaming online retail business as Twitch, which was founded in 2011 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, counts on a growth potential of 1.1 million unique broadcasters each month, up from the 600,000 figure in November last year.
As of July this year, the company had 55 million unique visitors to its site, which allow visitors to watch gamers playing video games live on the Internet.
Announcing the deal last month, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos said “broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon” and Twitch has been able to bring together millions of visitors to its site each month. He added that Amazon hopes to learn from Twitch and build on the shared knowledge and come up with new services for the gaming community.
Meanwhile, Twitch CEO, Emmett Shear, said that nothing much would change with the take-over as Twitch would keep its office, employees and brand. “Most importantly our independence” would be kept intact and Amazon’s support and resources would make Twitch even better, Shear said in a letter to its users.
