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The gaming world has never been the most receptive to women, and the mega-leak of Twitch's internal data has brought new evidence of this. On Wednesday morning (6.Oct.2022), there were reports on Twitter of a hacker openly making a 128 GB file of hacked Twitch material available on the 4chan forum. The video platform confirmed that it had been the target of a hack.
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 (@Twitch) October 6, 2021
News of the hack aside, it was inevitable not to look at the data on streamer payout since 2019 that has been popping up on social media.
Núcleo had access to the downloaded data, but could not confirm the integrity of its information.
So we did an analysis with 77 of the biggest Portuguese speaking streamers (the vast majority Brazilians) in number of followers.
We found that, if the data is correct, the Brazilian women in this ranking, of which there are only five, have earned far less per follower since 2019 -- taking into account the number of subscribers as of Oct. 6.
While men were paid, on average, US$0.27 per follower, women earned only US$0.16, a 40% difference. Keep in mind that the computation per follower is only a reference of how much an influencer earned proportionately to their most loyal audience.
Just as a comparison, taking into account these streamers’ gross revenue, each man has accumulated roughly USD 240 mil since 2019, while women have earned on average USD 87 mil over the same period.
It is worth noting that the five women on the list have 30% fewer followers on average.
Twitch is a predominantly male environment. According to data platform Statista, the worldwide ratio in 2019 was two men for every woman on the platform, with 73% being under the age of 35.
LOW PAY?
Brazilian streamers, in general, do not seem to be very happy with the platform’s payout policy. In August, they organized a strike to show dissatisfaction with the transfers made by the company, which is owned by e-commerce giant Amazon.
In Brazil, Amazon's company has its second largest global market, behind only the U.S.
Alexandre Gaules, a streamer with almost 3 million followers, represents a different approach: he made a video about Twitch's new pricing policy and said that producers would have to adapt to the changes, and that Jeff Bezos "isn't a boss, he's a partner.”
To add fuel to the fire, YouTuber Felipe Neto, who last year boasted that he bought a R$150,000 computer, said that if the data is true, Twitch is paying Brazilian streamers “VERY POORLY.”
HOW WE DID THIS
Núcleo obtained the leaked table with payout data for 10,000 Twitch streamers worldwide, which we will not make available in full.
From this information, we wanted to focus on Brazil. To do this, we used the ranking of the Twitch Metrics website for the 100 Brazilians with the most followers on the platform (the tip to the website came from this Twitter profile).
We cross-referenced this top 100 list with the data from the leak, and found 77 valid streamers whose names were on the list made available by the hacker.
Núcleo was able to verify that data was leaked (as confirmed by the company), but could not verify its integrity after it was posted.
Contacted via email, Twitch did not respond to Núcleo's request.
