Over 125 Gigabytes of Sensitive Information Was Just Leaked From Twitch's Servers
Published Oct. 6 2021, 1:26 p.m. ET
It has been quite a bad day for Twitch, a streaming platform many of the best video game players call home. On Oct. 6, 2021, the company experienced its biggest data breach ever, and a lot of sensitive company information was shared with the public.
Among the information shared were the exact details regarding the income of some of the platform's biggest content creators, and the numbers are mind-boggling to say the least. If you've ever wondered just how much professional video game streamers are pulling in from their fans on the service, the answer is now out there. Keep reading for all of the known details.
So, what do we now know about the income of some of Twitch's biggest streamers?
One user decided to take to Twitter with a spreadsheet list of the incomes of Twitch's biggest content creators. The list broke down not only the most recent monthly payout for dozens of streamers but also their net incomes from the platform from August 2019 until October 2021.
Some of the results are staggering, to say the least. In the month of September 2021 alone, streamer xQcOW brought in a whopping $752,467, with the next highest-paid streamer, summit1g, making $362,987 in just one month. The list went on to detail a few dozen other big names on the platform with monthly incomes ranging from $100,000 to about $7,000.
It's also worth noting that these amounts are direct payouts from Twitch and don't include donations, sponsors, merch, or other variables.
When it comes to total payout over the last two years, the results are even more astounding. Streamer CriticalRole has apparently made the most on the platform since 2019, taking in a whopping $9,626,712.16 from the platform alone.
The information regarding streamer income was only one facet of the massive Twitch leak.
The massive Twitch leak didn't stop with incomes, it also included sensitive company data.
According to Video Games Chronicle, the massive data breach shared every last bit of Twitch’s source code, including stream comment history "going back to its early beginnings." Furthermore, the company's entire client list, proprietary software development kits, and internal AWS services, names of "every other property that Twitch owns," details for an unreleased and unannounced Steam competitor, and "red teaming" tools, which are security measures it takes to combat hackers, were also leaked.
Was Twitch hacked? How did the massive data dump make it to the public?
It's unclear who exactly is behind the Twitch hack, as they posted the information anonymously on 4Chan, but it appears that it was a targeted effort to sabotage the company.
In their post to the message board alongside the 125 gigabytes of information, the hackers wrote that the point of their efforts was to "foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space," calling Twitch's community "a disgusting toxic cesspool," per Business Insider.
Twitch confirmed that the data breach was legitimate in a statement posted to Twitter. They wrote, "We can confirm a breach has taken place. Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us."
It's currently unclear if individual user data was also breached in the hack, but just to be safe, Twitch users should change their passwords and enable two-factor authentication.