Twitch has been affected by a leak, in which, among other things, the entire source code of the platform as well as information about the income of the streamers became publicly available. Behind the publication is apparently the desire to harm the company because of its community management.
Complete source code accessible
According to the announcement, the 125 GB file, which is freely available, contains the entire source code of the platform – including all changes since its launch. A review by, for example, heise.de has confirmed the authenticity of the source code. In addition, the file also contains all other code from projects that are part of Twitch but not directly connected to the platform, as well as proprietary SDKs and AWS services, tools used internally, and a chat program that probably belongs to Amazon’s as-yet-unreleased Steam competitor, suggesting an as-yet-unannounced collaboration between the two companies.
Some reports indicate that the file also contains information about encrypted passwords of the platform’s users. It is therefore advisable to immediately change the password of one’s Twitch account to restore the security of the data stored there.
Information on payments
In addition, the information on the income of the streamers, which was also published with the file, has hit the headlines. First affected parties have already confirmed the accuracy of the data contained about them, so it can be assumed that they are at least roughly correct.
The revenue list is headed by the CriticalRole channel, which earned around $9.6 million between August 2019 and October 2021. The MontanaBlack88 channel is the most financially successful German-language one; it was able to generate revenues of around US$2.3 million in the same period.
Twitch is to be harmed
Behind the publication is apparently a massive anger at Twitch: ” The community is a toxic cesspool, so we want to disrupt operations and encourage competition in the online streaming market”. In German, roughly: “The community is a toxic cesspool, so we want to disrupt operations and encourage more competition in the online streaming market.” The incident thus joins the recent growing criticism of the streaming platform’s community management.
