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$13m: Twitch streamers’ massive pay days revealed in data leak

Eliza Bavin
·Personal Finance Editor
·2-min read
The Twitch logo and Australian currency
A massive data leak has revealed the pay packets of Twitch's largest streamers (Source: Getty/Twitch)

Some of the world's largest online streamers have had their data exposed after streaming platform Twitch suffered a major data breach.

Hackers attacked the platform, taking everything from source code to streamers’ personal information.

Twitch is an online platform that allows anyone to livestream what they are doing, and anyone who is on the platform at the time can watch.

It is mostly used for video game play and “just chatting”, where the streamers can tell stories and talk to those watching.

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The hackers leaked data, including years’ worth of creator payouts, source code for the mobile, desktop and video game console clients, an unreleased stream competitor from Amazon Game studios, and Twitch’s internal security tools.

But the main thing that had the internet buzzing was the supposed payouts that have been made to the largest streamers on the platform.

Who are the biggest streamers?

According to the leaked information, the largest streamers on the platform are making millions of dollars a year.

Here is how much the top 10 streamers made between August 2019 and October 2021.

  1. CriticalRole - $13.22 million (US$9.62 million)

  2. xQc - $11.6 million (US$8.45 million)

  3. summit - $8 million (US$5.84 million)

  4. Tfue - $7.3 million (US$5.3 million)

  5. NICKMERCS - $6.9 million (US$5.01 million)

  6. ludwig - $4.5 million (US$3.3 million)

  7. TimTheTatman - $4.5 million (US$3.3 million)

  8. Altour - $4.2 million (US$3.05 million)

  9. Auronplay - $4.2 million (US$3.05 million)

  10. LIRIK - $4.1 million (US$3 million)

While the figures cannot all be verified some Twitch streamers have come forward saying the figures are accurate in how much they had been paid.

“I looked at one revenue file to validate if this is legit... literally 100% match to my analytics.. ad revenue, etc…,” one streamer said.

Twitch confirmed the breach on Twitter saying it was working hard to understand the full extent of what was stolen.

“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 said.

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