What is the reality of 'distributor's earnings' highlighted by the Twitch data leak incident?



On October 6, 2021, it was discovered that 120GB of data such as source code and user's personal information was leaked from Twitch, a live streaming platform for gamers owned by Amazon. Since the leaked data included 'the amount paid to the distributor', the top 1% of the distributors accounted for more than half of the amount paid by Twitch. The reality is clear.

Twitch Streamer Earnings Increase for Top Gamers, Data From Hack Shows --WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitch-streamer-earnings-increase-for-top-gamers-data-from-hack-shows-11633802185

Many top Twitch streamers don't make minimum wage, and 3 new takeaways from the Twitch hack --The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/10/08/twitch-hack-leak-minimum-wage-pay-hasan/

Millionaire Twitch streamers react to their leaked earnings | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/millionaire-twitch-streamers-react-to-their-leaked-earnings/

On October 6, 2021 local time, a torrent file was posted on 4chan, an overseas bulletin board site, that could access 125GB of data allegedly stolen from Twitch by a hacker. This post contains the entire Twitch source code, including commit history, information about Twitch's own SDK and internal AWS services, and unreleased Steam competitors developed by Amazon Game Studios. It leaked so much data that it was said to be the biggest leak I've ever seen.

Admitting that Twitch was hacked and leaked a large amount of data such as source code, payment information, personal information --GIGAZINE



Among this series of leaked data, 'information about the money paid to the distributor' is a hot topic. This information is a detail of the amount Twitch paid to the distributor, and goes back to the 'earnings of individual distributors'. Below is the revenue ranking of Twitch distributors in July 2021, and you can see that the number one xQcOW earned $ 725,467 in a month.




Twitch declined to comment on this information, but several distributors have already acknowledged that the earnings described in this information are true.

From this one case, the media companies are discussing the actual situation regarding the earning of distributors. From January to September 2021, Twitch paid a total of $ 889 million (about 100 billion yen) to distributors, but if you look only in the category of 'top 10,000 distributors' However, we know that the top 1% of distributors account for about $ 529 million, or about 60%.



The distribution for each revenue is as follows. It can be seen that the top 5% of distributors earned $ 1000 (about 110,000 yen) in the same period, and most distributors earned $ 10 to $ 100 (about 1100 to 11,000 yen). The Washington Post, a large American letter, reports that '25% of the top 10,000 distributors do not earn the minimum wage.'



As mentioned above, it became clear that only a very small number of top-tier distributors are making big profits, but the data leaked from Twitch alone underestimates the earnings of top-tier distributors. It is also pointed out. The reason is that the top distributors earn money from brand collaboration, sponsorship, merchandising, etc. in addition to direct income from Twitch, and for some people, such sponsorship etc. rather than payment from Twitch. It is said that it is larger.

It is reported that this large-scale information leak is due to Twitch's internal practice of 'focusing on speed and profit over user safety and data security', and a person who claims to be a former employee of Twitch is 'Twitch. Is a company that provides lip services in terms of safety. '' Despite regular moderation failures, management responds very slowly, 'he reportedly accused.

Twitch explained, 'Since the credit card number is not stored in Twitch in the first place, the credit card information has not been leaked due to this leak.' 'There is no sign that the login information has been leaked so far.' Commented, 'We are currently investigating.' Regarding the security of the distributor, we have announced that we have reset the stream key.

What's New in Twitch Security | Twitch Blog
https://blog.twitch.tv/ja-jp/2021/10/06/updates-on-the-twitch-security-incident/

in Web Service,   Game, Posted by darkhorse_log