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The peculiar series of events started when an anonymous user on a 4chan bulletin board recently posted a somewhat serious information regarding Twitch streamers’ approximate payouts, as well as all of the other internal information of the Amazon’s streaming platform.
Contents
The 128 GB-sized torrent magnet link, which was included in the post on the 4chan forum, started appearing on the web shortly after the announcement.
The major data leak reportedly includes various sensitive information, such as all of Twitch’s main website source code, and its development and commit history, and also all of the Amazon’s streaming service’s clients for consoles, mobile devices, and standalone desktop software.
The leak also accommodates SDKs for developers, linked AWS services, sensational unreleased projects, and other internal files and tools.
The hacked data from the United States’ company also contains important financial documents, such as platform streamer’s earnings, and other Amazon’s private data.
Comments
The leaker mentioned in his message, that they released all of the data in order to encourage more healthier competition on the video game streaming market.
It is interesting that the 4chan topic starter also characterized all of the Twitch community in a negative way, using such adjectives as “disgusting” and “toxic”.
The data breach was later confirmed by multiple authoritative news agencies in the world, as well as the Twitch company officials themselves.
The company, which is owned by the United States’ famous entrepreneur and multimillionaire Jeff Bezos, released an official statement, confirming that the data breach was real. It was said that Twitch was in the process of evaluating the resulting outcome of the situation.
Some of the Amazon platform’s streamers already got banned for showing the leaked sensitive data during their live Twitch broadcasts. In the official explanation, the series of bans were issued due to them revealing some kind of vague concept of “personal information”.
Personalities
Some of the platform’s most successful figures include popular gamers such as former professional Overwatch player Felix “xQcOW” Lengyel. He was active on the Blizzard title’s scene in 2016-2019. According to the leaked financial data, the 25-year-old xQcOW cashed in more than $8.454 million during the period of about 27 months.
The controversial Canadian tank player previously competed for one of the most famous Overwatch teams in NA, such as the Dallas Fuel squad and Gladiators Legion team — Los Angeles Gladiators academy team, which are part of the Blizzard’s Overwatch League and Overwatch Contenders series championships, respectively.
The other well-known streamer who managed to get into the top 3 of the list is a former CS: GO pro gamer Jaryd Russell Lazar, who is better known in the gaming and esports community as summit1g. The popular North American CS player was paid approximately $5,847 million.
The retired 34-year-old American was active on the professional scene since 2011 and played for US CS: GO teams such as Exertus eSports, Area 51 Gaming, Adaptation, Mythic, subtLe, and Old Guys Club. Lazar officially retired in 2019 to pursue a full-time career in streaming.
One of the world’s most earning female Twitch streamers appeared to be Imane Anys, who is better known among her fans as Pokimane. According to the statistical data, the 25-year-old Moroccan-Canadian placed 39 in the list and earned more than $1,528 million.
Pokimane played and streamed various gaming and esports titles, including popular ones, such as League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics, Fortnite, Among Us, and Minecraft. Besides Twitch, she is also a popular YouTube personality. Anys managed to win the 2018 10th Shorty Awards in “Twitch Streamer of the Year” category, and she was nominated several times as the best streamer and the best content creator of the year.
Steam competitor
The leak also covered additional information regarding one of Amazon’s new projects codenamed Vapor, which is basically a game shop and is anticipated as the Valve’s Steam store competitor.
Imagine Steam library with all of its games merging with Twitch, having all of the Amazon’s platform streams of the corresponding titles, and also adding all of the Twitch’s entertaining functionality.
The abovementioned software presumably integrates some of Twitch’s features with the user’s digital game library. Amazon had already patented the technology shortly after the North American company acquired Twitch.
Twitch has a huge user base, so the Vapor’s leaked initial concept from the Amazon’s developers seems to look quite promising.
Past issues
Previously, Twitch was already featured in a massive issue with the so-called hate raids, where a lot of streamers on the Amazon’s broadcasting platform were harassed mostly due to their ethnicity, nationality, sex, disability status, or other personal peculiarities.
In September this year, some Twitch streamers even stopped streaming and announced massive boycotts. Their protests were primarily aimed against the US company’s lack of reaction to the overall displeasing situation.
How much do Twitch streamers make?
Finally, one of the leaked documents had some of the actual and detailed financial data, including the entire list of the Amazon platform’s most paid streaming channels.
The hacked data, which was proposed to the public by KnowSomething on Twitter, includes the sum of payments from the entire recorded period from August 2019 until October 2021.
It is worth noting that the above list contains not only accounts of prominent streamers, but also the channels of big video game developers and global esports tournaments operators such as ESL Gaming’s CS: GO channel.
The presented data supposedly does not include other financing, such as possible donations, merch sales, revenue from sponsorship integrations and other services, if available.
There are some suggestions in the community, that any of the highly profitable integrations, such as gambling companies’ sponsorships, may easily bring millions of dollars of additional revenue alone each month.
The data in the list are given in millions of US dollars. Some of the interviewed streamers already confirmed that the leaked financial data is looking quite accurate.
Here is the list of top 100 most earning channels on Twitch:
| 1 | CriticalRole | $9629000 |
| 2 | xQcOW | $8454000 |
| 3 | summit1g | $5847000 |
| 4 | Tfue | $5295000 |
| 5 | NICKMERCS | $5096000 |
| 6 | ludwig | $3290000 |
| 7 | TimTheTatman | $3290000 |
| 8 | Altoar | $3053000 |
| 9 | auronplay | $3053000 |
| 10 | LIRIK | $2984000 |
| 11 | __unknown__ | $2863000 |
| 12 | Gaules | $2844000 |
| 13 | HasanAbi | $2810000 |
| 14 | Asmongold | $2551000 |
| 15 | loltyler1 | $2490000 |
| 16 | RanbooLive | $2401000 |
| 17 | MontanaBlack88 | $2391000 |
| 18 | ibai | $2314000 |
| 19 | Castro_1021 | $2311000 |
| 20 | MOONMOON | $2236000 |
| 21 | TheRealKnossi | $2157000 |
| 22 | moistcr1tikal | $2098000 |
| 23 | Mizkif | $2086000 |
| 24 | CohhCarnage | $2061000 |
| 25 | shroud | $2040000 |
| 26 | AdmiralBahroo | $1985000 |
| 27 | Pestily | $1961000 |
| 28 | Sykkuno | $1916000 |
| 29 | ESL_CSGO | $1903000 |
| 30 | LVNDMARK | $1902000 |
| 31 | DrLupo | $1894000 |
| 32 | AdinRoss | $1854000 |
| 33 | Clix | $1843000 |
| 34 | TeePee | $1786000 |
| 35 | Rubius | $1764000 |
| 36 | PaymoneyWubby | $1756000 |
| 37 | alanzoka | $1731000 |
| 38 | Trainwreckstv | $1572000 |
| 39 | pokimane | $1528000 |
| 40 | tommyinnit | $1513000 |
| 41 | Maximilian_DOOD | $1499000 |
| 42 | GRONKH | $1481000 |
| 43 | sodapoppin | $1461000 |
| 44 | ZeratoR | $1440000 |
| 45 | BobbyPoffGaming | $1415000 |
| 46 | Ninja | $1378000 |
| 47 | Philza | $1364000 |
| 48 | Amouranth | $1363000 |
| 49 | BruceGreene | $1360000 |
| 50 | Odablock | $1354000 |
| 51 | RayNarvaezJr | $1335000 |
| 52 | Symfuhny | $1334000 |
| 53 | dakotaz | $1324000 |
| 54 | ZanoXVII | $1310000 |
| 55 | SypherPK | $1295000 |
| 56 | Trymacs | $1288000 |
| 57 | TheGrefg | $1286000 |
| 58 | Papaplatte | $1286000 |
| 59 | JohnPitterTV | $1215000 |
| 60 | RATIRL | $1214000 |
| 61 | RocketLeague | $1204000 |
| 62 | NoWay4u_Sir | $1188000 |
| 63 | GamesDoneQuick | $1185000 |
| 64 | GernaderJake | $1176000 |
| 65 | fps_shaka | $1173000 |
| 66 | EsfandTv | $1170000 |
| 67 | buddha | $1158000 |
| 68 | Locklear | $1155000 |
| 69 | stylishnoob4 | $1147000 |
| 70 | ANGRYPUG | $1146000 |
| 71 | Sintica | $1075000 |
| 72 | Fresh | $1073000 |
| 73 | Quackity | $1065000 |
| 74 | RonnieRadke | $1063000 |
| 75 | Riot | $1052000 |
| 76 | KYR_SP33DY | $1052000 |
| 77 | Gladd | $1045000 |
| 78 | juansguarnizo | $1034000 |
| 79 | Bugha | $1034000 |
| 80 | NickEh30 | $1027000 |
| 81 | Tubbo | $1000000 |
| 82 | Pikabooirl | $994000 |
| 83 | RatedEpicz | $987000 |
| 84 | Swagg | $984000 |
| 85 | Shotz | $984000 |
| 86 | CDNThe3rd | $976000 |
| 87 | Tumblurr | $960000 |
| 88 | Aydan | $953000 |
| 89 | ops1x | $947000 |
| 90 | scump | $946000 |
| 91 | BarbarousKing | $933000 |
| 92 | julien | $918000 |
| 93 | mang0 | $916000 |
| 94 | Kitboga | $915000 |
| 95 | chocoTaco | $913000 |
| 96 | alexelcapo | $911000 |
| 97 | Anomaly | $908000 |
| 98 | Jerma985 | $906000 |
| 99 | The8BitDrummer | $895000 |
| 100 | TSM_ImperialHal | $886000 |