On Wednesday, Oct. 6, Twitch admitted to a massive data breach containing source code, streamer payout information, and business practices. Shortly before the Amazon-owned streaming platform sent out the tweet, an anonymous hacker publicly posted a 125-gigabyte torrent link on 4chan, an online chat image board forum.

“Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this,” said Twitch. “We will update the community as soon as additional information becomes available.”

As Twitch investigates the damage, the internet is on fire about what’s already known about the breach. So far, the juiciest details are the insane multi-million dollar payouts for some of its content creators and news of an alleged unreleased online game store, code-named Vapor, from Amazon Game Studios.

It’s a shocking list of the gross payouts of the top 100 highest-paid streamers from Aug. 2019 to Oct. 2021, and it doesn’t include the money they earned outside of Twitch, such as sponsorships, external donations, and merchandise.

Be fair warned; some may reconsider their day job after reading this list.

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

It should come as no surprise how much money content creators make on Twitch, considering the platform rose to 2.8 million average concurrent viewers in 2021, according to stats from Twitchtracker.com. 

The additional data available on the website proves Twitch’s growth excels every year. Still, the recent leak is a significant blow to the platform in a space that is becoming more competitive due to other established streaming platforms like YouTube Gaming making their mark.

News of an online video game store from Amazon hasn’t taken up as much of the spotlight as the payout information has since the leak. However, it is arguably more critical in comparison because it’s a business move that can potentially shift the online video game market, especially if it claims to integrate Twitch’s many features.

Twitch posted an update on their blog clarifying to the community how hackers gained access because of an error during a server configuration change while also shedding light on privacy concerns.

“At this time, we have no indication that login credentials have been exposed,” wrote Twitch. “Additionally, full credit card numbers are not stored by Twitch, so full credit card numbers were not exposed.”

Even though those words might be enough validation for some Twitch users, the platform advises updating passwords and turning on two-factor authentication for an extra layer of security.

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