Twitch is a major platform these days, what started out as a humble space for gamers to stream their sessions and have others watch live has turned into a multi-million dollar industry as people from all walks of life set out to make their mark and gather a following.
Unfortunately, Twitch was the recent victim of a hack that supposedly resulted in the leaked information of some of their top user earnings, and if this is to be believed it is enough to make you want to go and create an account of your own.
The top earner based on the leaks was CriticalRole, a dungeons and dragons group headed by popular voice actor Matthew Mercer. The reported earnings for this channel was close to $10 million USD, which roughly converts to $14 million AUD. Twitter user KnowS0mething posted a breakdown of the top 100 earners on the platform, which you can view below.
The gross payouts of the top 100 highest-paid Twitch streamers from August 2019 until October 2021: pic.twitter.com/3Lj9pb2aBl
— KnowSomething (@KnowS0mething) October 6, 2021
Much like with Youtube creators, it is widely known that Twitch can be an extremely lucrative hustle, but the true figures were never really known. Now we have a very good understanding of just how massive the earnings can potentially be. Keep in mind though, that many of these users dedicate their lives to the platform, often streaming for hours on end daily and relying on fans interacting and donating/subscribing to their channel. Some users essentially run a business with employees, taxes and other expenses to operate, so these figures don’t necessarily indicate “take-home pay”.
The people behind the leak reportedly got their hands on over 100gbs of data, which includes the source code for the platform itself, with Twitch stating on their Twitter that they can “confirm a break has taken place”, and that they are “working with urgency to understand the extent of this”.
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.
— Twitch (@Twitch) October 6, 2021
No doubting that the Amazon-owned company will bounce back, but time will tell just how much impact this breach will cause the platform as users may now feel that their privacy and data is no longer secure.
About the Author
Justin White
He/Him
Justin is known for being the clown of any group and has spent his entire life playing and collecting video games. When he is not playing video games he is usually hanging out with his two American Staffies named Django and King (after Django Unchained characters) or his son Shia (yes, after Shia Labeouf).
