Daily Authority: Major Twitch leak reveals it all 🎮

An anonymous hacker released a huge treasure trove of information from Twitch, Amazon’s game streaming network. It includes everything from source code to payouts for the top streamers and everything in between.

But before we get into the details, just a note on this You should change your password if you have a Twitch account. The same goes for duplicate passwords. While you’re at it, enable 2FA (but not one who uses SMS).

And now the deets:

• The 125 GB torrent was posted on 4chan on Wednesday afternoon. It was quick verified by Twitch later that day.
• In contrast to other leaks, this one contains data that was only recorded this Monday.
• Corresponding Video Games Chronicle, the file contains:
  • All Twitch source code with commit history “going back to the early days”.
  • 2019 Creator Payout Reports.
  • Twitch clients for mobile devices, desktops and consoles.
  • Proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch.
  • “Any other property that Twitch possesses,” including IGDB and CurseForge.
  • An unreleased Steam competitor, code-named Vapor by Amazon Game Studios.
  • Twitch internal “Red Teaming” tools (to improve security by posing as hackers).
• Experts are still searching the files for more details, but suffice it to say that this is likely to be one of the biggest data leak of all time, with a massive impact on the Amazon company.

That said, one thing that was immediately understood is streamer payouts. Have you ever wondered how much do the top streamers make? Well, let’s go:

• 81 streamers have paid more than $ 1 million from Amazon since 2019. Here are the top 3 according to Leak:
  • Critical role: $ 9.6 million
  • xQcOW: $ 8.4 million
  • Summit1g: $ 5.8 million
• Like the rest of the leak, these numbers seem correct. Three streamers on the list confirmed to the BBC that they were correct to the best of our knowledge.
• These earnings are obviously impressive, but you have to keep in mind that they don’t include any promotions or donations outside of Twitch.
• In most cases, these will equal or exceed the amounts listed in the leak.
• But of course most streamers earn next to nothing. I’m sorry to destroy your dreams.

In case you haven’t been reminded of how old you are lately, this week marked 10 years since Steve Jobs passed away. Although he remains a controversial figure, he has really achieved some incredible things over the course of his career:

• Everyone knows their days at Apple, but less attention is paid to their work with Pixar. Between his positions at Apple, he bought the Graphics Group from Lucasfilm (later Pixar) for $ 5 million (plus $ 5 million investment) 1986.
• In 1995 he became President and CEO of Pixar, and that same year the company released a small film called Toy Story. It would keep earning $ 192 million at the box office, which heralds an era of celebrity voice actors in animated films.
• In 2006, Disney bought Pixar for $ 7.4 billion in stock, with Jobs joining Disney’s board of directors. The sale made Jobs the largest shareholder, owning more than 7% of Disney.
• He remained on the board of directors of Disney and was until his death called a Disney legend in 2013. His influence in film and animation is overshadowed by his work at Apple but is still an important part of his legacy.

Tristan will be back on Monday with more tech news.

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Nick Fernandez, editor.