Massive Twitch hack reveals casino and poker streamers’ payments

The earnings of top Twitch streamers, including those who live broadcast casino and poker content, have been revealed following a major data hack. In all, a 125GB cache of data belonging to the streaming platform was uploaded to anonymous bulletin board 4chan. Twitch, which is owned by tech giant Amazon, later blamed the breach on a “malicious third party” and said an urgent investigation was underway. Although Twitch insisted no login credentials or credit card numbers were exposed, streamers and IT professionals took to social media to urge Twitch users to change their passwords and deploy two-factor authentication.

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 (@Twitch) October 6, 2021

As well as exposing the company’s source code, the leak revealed how much the top 10,000 of Twitch’s estimated 9.2 million monthly active streamers were paid by the service between August 2019 and October 2021. This included how much the most popular broadcasters of live casino and poker content received from the platform, although it didn’t cover viewer donations, or the fees they received directly from igaming sites. On the casino front, it was revealed that German casino streamer TheRealKnossi – real name Jens Knossalla – was one of the highest earners across all categories, earning almost $2.2m since August 2019. Another famous casino streamer, Adin Ross, who has amassed five million Twitch followers, was shown to have received $1.8m during the same period. The American generated headlines earlier this year when he accidently displayed a Discord chat to his audience in which he bemoaned the fact crypto casino Duelbits ‘only’ offered him $1.4m a month to play on its site. In addition, Trainwreckstv amassed $1.6m during the period in question, while ClassyBeef, which is a slots and table games channel fronted by seven streamers, was paid $287,000 by Twitch. Details of the sums involved could mean additional scrutiny falls on casino streams. When EGR checked this morning, Trainwreckstv – real name Tyler Faraz Niknam – was live broadcasting a $2,000-a-spin slots session using a $500,000 balance, for example. Details of the Twitch earnings of well-known online poker players were also posted online. At the top of the tree was Team PokerStars Pro Lex Veldhuis, who was shown to have been paid around $294,000 in the past two-and-a-bit years. The Dutchman is currently offline, though, after PokerStars was forced to stop servicing the newly regulated Netherlands market as the Flutter-owned operator doesn’t have a licence in the country. Fellow PokerStars pro Fintan Hand from Ireland received $89,000, while Canadian Jamie Staples, who has been sponsored in the past by both PokerStars and partypoker, earned almost $60,000. Minor celebrity and YouTube star True Geordie – real name Brian Davies – has streamed poker content in the past and was paid $235,000, the leak disclosed. True Geordie also worked with UK bookmaker Ladbrokes for a short period on The Big Kick Off show. The highest amount any streaming channel earned between August 2019 and October 2021 was $9.6m. That accolade went to self-styled “nerdy voice actors” CriticalRole. The leak will be deeply embarrassing for Twitch as the platform previously kept its payments to streamers a closely guarded secret. It could therefore be potentially beneficial to rival services like YouTube Gaming, which is also offering massive sums to attract top gaming talent.