Twitch Content Creator Payouts and Top Streamers Revealed in Hack
Twitch experienced a personal data breached on Oct. 5. The person responsible for the hack is anonymous. Various types of sensitive information got leaked.
Oct. 6 2021, Published 1:09 p.m. ET
As Facebook deals with the aftermath of its platform outages, Twitch has issues of its own. On an anonymous forum named 4chan, a user leaked private information about the streaming platform on Oct. 5. The platform's highest-paid earners were part of the leaked information.
Twitch has revolutionized the gaming and streaming industry. It allows gamers to make a decent living off of streaming games, tournaments, and other events. However, the platform’s community has voiced its displeasures with the company in the past, which might be the reasoning behind the hacker exposing all of the platform's private information.
What was exposed in the Twitch leak and what was the motive?
The leak exposed sensitive information including source codes, content creator payouts, company clients, customer and cloud services used by Twitch, applications that Twitch owns, the development of an online game platform, and information on tools that the cybersecurity team uses. The person who exposed Twitch’s private information mentioned in the 4chain post that his leaks are just the first part of what he plans to expose. He might leak more information in the future.
The hacker mentioned in his post that Twitch is a “toxic” community. He wants to create more disruption and competition in the streaming market. In August, some of the top streamers in the Twitch community organized a strike against the platform. They expressed their dissatisfaction with the platform’s combat against hateful and malicious comments on different channels.
A streamer going by the name of RekItRaven posted on her Twitter about organizing a protest that involved not using the platform for the entire day on Sept. 1. She was the victim of a flood of racial slurs entering her channel. This has been a constant issue for Twitch, and that could very well be part of what the leaker was talking about.
Who are the highest paid twitch streamers?
With the leaked information, the total payouts were calculated from August 2019 to October 2021. The leak revealed some of the top-paid Twitch streamers. CriticalRole was at the top of the list for total payouts during the specified period. CriticalRole is a group of streamers who were voice actors. They turned their talents into a media company. The streamers had a total payout of $9,626,712.16 because they're widely recognized in the gaming industry. CriticalRole has published comics, novels, and even a TV show.
xQcOW, or xQc for short, was second on the list. xQc is a former star professional eSports player. The popular streamer made $8,454,427.17 in total payouts. The third streamer on that list is summit1g, another former professional eSports player, with a total payout of $5,847,541.17. All of the top ten payouts were each over $2.5 million.
What should Twitch users do?
If you have a Twitch account, it’s recommended that you change your password and ensure that you have two-factor authentication enabled. Even though user passwords weren’t made public in the leak, some encrypted passwords were exposed. It’s best to play it safe, even if your information wasn’t compromised.