Recently, a hacker released what is arguably one of the biggest data leaks fromTwitch, revealing everything from its base source code to details aboutrumored Amazon Steam competitor Vapor.Included in this huge information dump was also the income of nearly every streamer that uses Twitch as a content platform.
Of course, while what content creators make should not be the most notable aspect ofTwitch’s data leak for its over 41 million users, a list of the top 100 earners on Twitch has begun to gain huge traction on Twitter. User KnowSomething posted a list of the top 100 earners on Twitch, extracted from the data leak that was posted on 4Chan. The tweet thread had both a breakdown of recent monthly earnings and gross income since August 2019.
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Critical Role is Twitch’s Highest Earner Since 2019
In 2018, Critical Role began its second livestreamedDungeons and Dragonscampaign to resounding success. The year following also marked an incredibly important time for Critical Role, which had very quickly become its own production company, as it split from previous nerd-content network Geek and Sundry in February.
Distancing itself from the dwindling Geek and Sundry platform proved to be a solid business decision, as the group’s gross Twitch income since August 2019 is over $9.5 million, placing it as the highest-earning Twitch stream out there.The Legend of Vox Machinaanimated series is also set to launch in February 2022 on Amazon, showing just how far the game has come from its Geek and Sundry origins.
Unfortunately, the Critter community didn’t take this information well. While the series originally started as a home game between some voice actor friends, it has since spiraled into a fully-fledged media company. Manymarginalized voices in the TTRPG communitycritiqued the lack of diverse players in the upcoming third campaign, and the company’s Twitch revenue has been used to argue it has a responsibility to promote more diversity in the TTRPG space.
Twitch’s Highest-Paid Individual Streamers
Interestingly, there is a massive income disparity between the platform’s top individual streamers. StreamerxQc, who recently criticized GTA Online RP servers, earned the second most amount of money between August 2019 and 2021 on Twitch. During that time, he managed to accrue over $8.5 million.
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In contrast, the third highest-grossing streamer across that period, professionalCounterstrike: Global Offensiveplayer Summit1g, made significantly less at $5.8 million. Massive fluctuations in income were not, however, the only notable disparity revealed by this highest-earner list.
Of the top 100 highest-income streamers, very few were women, and even fewer were people of color or openly LGBTQ+. The first non-male on the list wasPokimane, who came in at number 39 on the list and also represents POC. Perhaps the most interesting thing revealed in this income leak is the lack of diversity among Twitch’s highest-earning streamers, at least in terms of subscription counts and ad revenue.
The Twitch Income List Isn’t Really That Accurate
After the recentHasan Piker house drama, the popular political streamer was well-prepared to deal with the backlash to people learning a rough approximate of his income. HasanAbi noted that the information in the leak is not that revelatory, as it just includes money from ads and subscriptions.
