Leaked email shows Twitch is not following Amazon’s new RTO policy

• Amazon recently announced corporate employees must return to the office five days a week in January.
• The mandate does not apply to Twitch, per an internal email.
• The big exception highlights Amazon’s challenges in applying a consistent RTO plan.

The first big exception to Amazon‘s strict RTO policy is here.

Twitch, the video streaming company Amazon acquired in 2014, will not be following the new RTO mandate, according to an internal email obtained by Business Insider.

Amazon last week announced that corporate employees will have to be in the office 5 days a week starting in January.

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy wrote in the email that the new changes in Amazon’s RTO policy “do not apply to Twitch.”

“We have a specific exception, and, as a practical matter that I mentioned in last week’s All Hands, we do not have the space to host all employees in our office spaces,” he wrote.

This shows the challenges involved in applying a consistent RTO plan across a massive business empire. Amazon has more than 1.5 million employees across dozens of countries and subsidiaries.

Twitch is the biggest exception to Amazon’s policy so far. There are other wrinkles, too. Amazon’s audiobook company Audible is rolling out the RTO mandate in April, while One Medical’s RTO kicks in in October 2025, BI previously reported.

Treating some employees in the same corporation differently when it comes to RTO has the potential to breed resentment. Last Monday, shortly after Amazon announced the new RTO plan, some Amazon employees took their frustrations to an internal Slack channel, which one person said was “burning” with so many comments and reactions.

Amazon has been dealing with an unusually contentious RTO process. Last year, employees submitted an internal petition to CEO Andy Jassy and staged a walkout in opposition to a less-strict in-office mandate. The company later forced employees to move closer to office hubs, and Jassy warned that those not complying with RTO could be terminated.

Twitch’s need for more office space could be a positive sign for the commercial real estate market. However, Clancy’s email didn’t indicate that Twitch would follow Amazon’s RTO plan even if the company found more office capacity.

Clancy has not always followed Amazon’s leadership decisions wholeheartedly. In 2023, he said he was “disappointed” by Amazon’s layoffs, which affected more than 400 Twitch employees.

In his latest email, Clancy said Twitch is “supportive” of Amazon’s move to improve its manager-to-employee ratios, which was also announced last week. Still, the move may not impact Twitch much since the company recently made many changes to reduce management layers, he added.

Spokespeople for Amazon and Twitch didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

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