Earlier today, an anonymous hacker shared 125GB of data from Twitch, including account details and passwords, creator payouts, comment history, and its source code, the Amazed-owned streaming platform has publicly confirmed the breach.
After nearly eight hours since news of the major privacy leak first broke, Twitch acknowledged the incident and said its teams were “working with urgency to understand the extent of this [breach].” Twitch shared no further comments or warnings, but promised it would have an update as soon as it had more information. If you have not already, Twitch account holders should change their passwords now.
In a report from VGC, an anonymous source from Twitch confirmed the legitimacy of the leak and said the company already knew. The data may have been obtained two days ago on Monday, October 4.
The data from Amazon’s streaming service wound up in a post on 4chan, where the unidentified user said the download was “part one” of the leak. As of right now, there’s been no further confirmation on additional leaked files.
Data on creator payouts dating back to 2019 are among the files included, and private information from some of Twitch’s top creators is already making rounds across social media. The leak is also said to include an Amazon Games Studio platform made to compete with Steam, security tools, and other properties the company owns like CurseForge.
Streamers have spent months criticizing the platform’s poor communication and lack of action after a surge in hate raids targeting marginalized creators. In August, the #DoBetterTwitch campaign began circulating through a hashtag on Twitter, demanding the company address the harassment and abuse flooding its platform.
Twitch responded with a lawsuit over the hate raids, suing two users for “targeting black and LGBTQIA+ streamers with racist, homophobic, sexist and other harassing content,” in a violation of its terms. Amazon’s streaming platform has also implemented new forms of user verification, giving channel owners more tools to mod their chats and prevent further abuse.