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The multimillion dollar payouts of Twitch's top 100 streamers leaked: Here's how much your favorite creator is reportedly making

Oct 7, 2021, 02:09 IST
Business Insider
A screenshot of the "Critical Role" Twitch channel, which took the top spot among highest-paid Twitch channels. Twitch
  • Amazon's Twitch was hacked, which resulted in a major data breach.
  • A list of the highest-paid channels and how much they were paid was reportedly included in the hack.
  • A channel operated by voice actors took the top spot, with just shy of $10 million in earnings across the last two years.
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In the last 24 months, the highest-paid channel on Twitch reportedly earned just shy of $10 million from the Amazon-owned company.

That doesn't include what the channel's owners earned from the popular YouTube channel they operate, which cuts versions of Twitch content for YouTube users, and before any advertising partnerships or other forms of revenue.

The channel, Critical Role, is operated by a self-described "bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors" who stream everything from elaborate "Dungeons & Dragons" campaigns to talk shows to lo-fi music.

Critical Role is among a group of 100 popular Twitch streaming channels whose revenue data appears to have been part of a massive Twitch data hack. Though Twitch confirmed the hack on Wednesday afternoon, the company didn't further detail what data was taken in the security breach.

A torrent of a 125-gigabyte file of data pulled from the hack is circulating on the anonymous message board 4chan.

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As the contents circulated on Wednesday, people began highlighting choice details from the data - such as the 100 highest-paid Twitch channels:

The list is full of big name streamers, like Félix "xQc" Lengyel and Imane "Pokimane" Anys, the vast majority of which are said to have earned over $1 million in Twitch revenue across the last 24 months.

The people claiming responsibility for the breach said in a 4chan post that the point of the hack was to "foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space" because Twitch's community is "a disgusting toxic cesspool."

They also detailed the main contents of the hack: the source code for Twitch going back years, an unannounced digital game storefront meant to rival heavyweights like Steam, and years of financial records of Twitch streamers, in addition to the software development kits for various Twitch apps and adjacent software.

Twitch confirmed the data breach in a statement sent to Insider which was also posted on Twitter.

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"We can confirm a breach has taken place," the statement said. "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."

Got a tip? Contact Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (bgilbert@insider.com), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.

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