Twitch confirms data breach as million-dollar payouts to games streamers leak online

Twitch, the Amazon-owned video game streaming platform, has confirmed it's been hit by what appears to be an enormous data breach.

Roughly 135 gigabytes of data has been leaked online, revealing not only Twitch's source code but also the payout figures for its streamers - amounting to more than a million dollars since 2019 for the most popular accounts.

Several gamers have confirmed the authenticity of the data in the leak. Scott Hellyer tweeted that the data in the leak referencing him was "100% true in terms of payout value info".

"This is real and will impact people for years. Please don't downplay this for people that worry about it," he added.

The data breach was advertised on the imageboard 4chan, where an anonymous post with the title "Twitch leaks part one" suggested that more information would be released.

The post, which linked to a torrent file, quipped: "Jeff Bezos paid $970 million for this, we're giving it away FOR FREE."

The leaker indicated that the breach was motivated by a dislike of the Twitch community, which they described as "a disgusting toxic cesspool".

"So to foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space, we have completely pwned them," they added.

Also leaked were Twitch's internal security tools and infrastructure data. It is unclear whether passwords or credit card information was also stolen.

In a short statement, Twitch said: "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 has also emailed users informing them that it has reset their stream keys "out of an abundance of caution".

Stream keys are unique codes assigned to each user, allowing them to broadcast to Twitch using the software of their choice.

The company says those who stream directly from a PlayStation or Xbox console, or using one of its own services, such as the Twitch mobile app, don't have to do anything as their key should update automatically.