The streaming gods have blessed us with a bountiful harvest as some major things went down this week, literally. I hope you've changed your Twitch passwords because a major hack resulted in loads of data being made public. In other news Amouranth was banned from the streaming platform and a number of others in a recent bout of drama.
Twitch Hacked
A major hack resulted in 128GB worth of Twitch data being made public. This included the source code and creator payout reports; and this was supposedly only "part one" of the leak. Twitch acknowledged the breach saying, "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." The company later blamed a "server configuration change" for providing access to "a malicious third party."
Fortunately, it was later confirmed that there had been no indication that login credentials had been compromised. But I'd change my password just in case.
Amouranth Banned From Everywhere
Streamer Amouranth seems to have made a habit out of getting banned. Whether it's for streaming from a hot tub or farting into a mic, she has managed to accumulate five Twitch bans to date. However, this time it wasn't just the streaming platform, as she was banned from Instagram and TikTok as well. "Getting “deplatformed” everywhere is a bizarre feeling," she tweeted. "I have so much energy and a paucity of places to put it now. Will workout and make YouTube videos all weekend I guess."
No reason was given as to why she was banned from all three platforms, but she has suddenly started promoting her private network as well as another site featuring her content. Lots of coincidences there, aye?
Squidgame Banned Because of Squid Game
Imagine you've had your handle for years and then it suddenly gets banned because a hit Korean TV show comes out. That's exactly what happened to Lydia Ellery, otherwise known as SquidGame or SquidGaming on her streaming and social media platforms. Ellery took to Twitter when she noticed that she could not log into her Instagram account which went by the name 'squidgame'. Apparently, she was also bombarded with messages from fans of the Squid Game TV show before her account was suspended.
The news went viral and even reached the number one spot on the first page of Reddit, which was perhaps enough the reason for Instagram to eventually restore her access to the account.
Nickmercs Signs With Twitch
Things aren't all bad for Twitch right now. Sure, it got hacked. Sure, it's partners' payouts were revealed. But hey, they managed to sign popular streamer Nickmercs on an exclusivity deal. It seems Twitch is trying to make sure more big streamers don't jump ship to YouTube.
You can be sure that it took a lot of monetary convincing to make Nickmercs sign an exclusive deal, considering all the things going on at the company at the moment. Whatever be the case, his 28,000 subscriber base is a big get.
Naval Streaming Strategies
This bit of news comes in two parts. Firstly, it turns out US Navy ships have Facebook pages for some reason, and second, someone streamed Age of Empires on one of them… six times. That's right, the official Facebook page of the USS Kidd, which normally posts bland stuff like crew pictures and deployment dates suddenly started streaming the real-time strategy game.
“The official Facebook page for USS Kidd (DDG 100) was hacked,” Navy spokesperson Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman said. “We are currently working with Facebook technical support to resolve the issue.” While "hacked" isn't the right word here (just asked Twitch), it was more likely a case of someone forgetting to log out of their account.