Amazon's gamer streaming unit Twitch on Wednesday announced that it was laying off 500 staff, reportedly one third of the company, as it struggles financially despite strong popularity among players.

"I wanted to send a short note to let you know that we've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our workforce today," Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said in a blog post.

Twitch, acquired by Amazon in 2014 for close to $1 billion, has hit headwinds of late and recently shut down its operations in major market South Korea due to cost issues.

The cuts, first reported by Bloomberg, came as Twitch has suffered an exodus of top executives amid a massive cost-cutting campaign across Amazon units.

They also came after previous rounds of staff cuts at the streamer, which is widely used within the gaming community.

"I know many of you are wondering why this is happening. Over the last year, we've been working to build a more sustainable business so that Twitch will be here for the long run and throughout the year we have cut costs and made many decisions to be more efficient," Clancy wrote.

"Unfortunately, despite these efforts, it has become clear that our organization is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business," Clancy said.

Amazon last year began its biggest ever job cutting campaign, which it said will reach 27,000 positions across the company.

As part of that wave, Amazon on Wednesday also announced that it was laying off hundreds of people at its Prime Video and at MGM Studios division.

"This is a difficult decision to make and one that my leadership team and I do not take lightly," the company's entertainment chief Mike Hopkins wrote in an email to staff.