14 Oct
The Twitch streaming platform has been hacked and the earnings of thousands of streamers have been published online. The Amazon-owned website is a major success story in the gaming world but was apparently targeted because of its community being “a disgusting toxic cesspool”.
Crazy Numbers
The data which was stolen amounted to a 125GB file posted on the 4Chan message board, and it included a lot of surprising numbers. It was also labeled as part one, meaning that there could be a lot more to come.
The payout reports listed, go back as far as 2019 and include encrypted passwords for many accounts.
Already this year the platform has paid out $889 million to its partners. Up from $517 million during the same period last year. According to the Wall Street Journal the top 1% of earners banked more than half of the entire revenue stream. At the other end of the scale, the bottom 75% of earners can’t even scrape more than $120 per month together.
Despite some streamers earning outrageous sums of money from Twitch advertising, only 81 of them have been paid in excess of $1 million since August 2019. This is surprising, considering what many YouTubers earn. It’s worth mentioning that many streamers duplicate their Twitch content over on YouTube, giving them a tidy boost.
How Much Do Poker Streamers Earn?
It didn’t take long before a member of the 2+2 forum downloaded the data and made a table showing how much poker streamers were earning.
Lex Veldhuis was up top having earned $294,298.16. Maybe surprisingly, he also sits in 558th place out of all streamers. Given the meteoric rise of esports over the last couple of years, we didn’t expect a poker player to be up so high in the rankings, but it’s great to see.
In second place was “True Geordie” with a grand total of $235,118.07. Real name Brian Davis, he is known for streaming mainly sports content, with an emphasis on football and fighting sports. He is also a friend of Charlie Carrel and has started streaming poker home games over the last year, and appears to be doing well for a non-professional player.
Ben Spragg, the Staples brothers and Jeff Gross also appear, but none are making as much as many expected given their popularity in the game.
