An anonymous hacker leaked payroll information for every streamer on Twitch yesterday, and predictably, the revealed incomes have become an inescapable topic of conversation for streamers in their Twitch chats and on social media. The range of reactions to the leak has been vast, with some streamers making light of the matter, and others seeing it as an opportunity to spotlight longstanding issues with the livestreaming platform.
Yesterday, Twitch confirmed that “a breach had taken place.” While the company investigated the hack, prominent streamers took to Twitter to react.
Jack Manifold (JackManifoldTV), along with multiple other high-profile streamers, joked about the leak: “It is completely unfair that I am that far down the list, and I will be doing everything in my power to pump up that number going forward; for you guys!” Meanwhile, some streamers referred to each other by their ranked placement on the leaked list. Ludwig Anders Ahgren (ludwig), one of the biggest earners on the platform, jokingly replied to another streamer with “don’t speak unless spoken to, #486.” Several Twitch creators even updated their Twitter handles to incorporate their ranking among Twitch earners.
Other streamers such as Charles White Jr. (moistcr1tikal) expressed surprise at the public reaction to the disclosed figures, citing the fact that it was possible to calculate a streamer’s ballpark income from a channel’s subscriber count.
Super weird to see people freak out about twitch income and act like it was some big secret when sub count is publicly available. Take that number and multiple by 2.5 or 3.5 and you’re there. I made a whole video on it; it’s not the krabby patty formula, it’s basic shit
Hasan Piker (HasanAbi), one of the platform’s biggest earners who recently generated strong public reactions for buying a house, jokingly anticipated being at the centre of another firestorm, tweeting: “just woke up to some fun news. cant wait for ppl to be mad at me about my publicly available sub count again.”
Other streamers such as Smash Bros. commentator Phil Visu (EEvisu) ribbed more successful streamers for not being more generous with their Twitch earnings.
Twitch leak just made me realise my millionaire friends are cheap, how we hit Wendy’s and you ain’t picking up the tab Mr. 100k a month? Smh why TF we even at Wendy’s?!
However, other reactions were more serious.
Creators such as variety streamer and host Brandon Stennis (iamBrandon) were disappointed at how Twitch handled the leaks, citing a lack of communication with streamers who were affected.
With a big leak breach like Twitch has, why didn’t they email this information to people and only talked about it on Twitter? I mean its a bit of a huge deal if information like this is out. Not everyone is on Twitter.
Popular streamer Anthony DiMarco (ChilledChaos) was less than impressed with some people’s reactions to the largest doxxing that the Twitch community has ever experienced. Apparently, several streamers have had problems with chat participants behaving badly about the leaks.
Bro…if you make shitty Twitch Leak jokes and get banned by my friends, don’t come to my chat complaining. Because you are also going to get banned. “How does it feel to be XYZ compared to someone else”?
Streamer group Black Girl Gamers, meanwhile, saw the leaks as an opportunity to highlight the opportunity disparities for marginalised content creators on the platform.
The leak is proof of what we’ve been saying all along regarding the lack of diversity at the top, that’s all.
And Tanya DePass (cypheroftyr), director of the nonprofit organisation I Need Diverse Games, was disappointed that the leaks gave some audience members ammunition with which to devalue the labour and costs of content creation.
Watching people spin out over the Twitch earnings numbers, especially the pearl clutching over [Critical Role] & adding the [Kickstarter] funds; reveal how little some folks know about how much content costs to create.
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