How much are Twitch's biggest streamers earning: Recent leaks reveal pay disparity

Oct 6, 2021

The leaked information from Twitch has revealed the huge gap in earnings between creators on the platform, even at the very top level of the streaming game. While Twitch has made many users of their service very wealthy indeed, there are some startling numerical differences between streamers exposed by the leak.

There are a fair few creators that have taken home over $1M a year in direct payouts from Twitch, at least according to the leaked information. In a list of total earned between August 2019 and October 2021, it was Dungeons & Dragons channel CriticalRole that raked in the highest payout, taking home nearly $10M over the period, ahead of former Overwatch pro Felix "xQc" Lengyel.

Pokimane, Amouranth outearned in Twitch payouts

However, there are some more interesting morsels of information contained within the leak around the disparity between some creators and others, with a notable absence of female streamers in the top 25 names listed. In fact, you have to go down to 39th on the list of top earners to find the first female streamer, with Imane "Pokimane" Anys having earned $1.53M over the time period.

The next highest female earner is Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa, who made waves in the hot tub category at the start of this year, sitting just ahead of former Rooster Teeth employee Bruce Green. What makes that interesting is Amouranth averaging around 11K viewers for her streams, while Green is listed as having just over 600 viewers at any given moment.

This demonstrates the differing ratios of viewers to "whales" in different streams, with Green having a few heavy-hitting followers who regularly donate subs to other viewers in his stream while Amouranth has high numbers of lurking, non-paying viewers. Green is also not featured on the list of top September 2021 earners, while Amouranth took home close to $100K that month.

Unknown millionaire, two-time champ?

Another interesting entry is at number 11 on the list, which is listed simply as _unknown_, which insiders tell us means it is a banned account. That could very well refer to the now-banned Herschel "Dr Disrespect" Beahm, who managed to earn enough in half the time of the rest of the list to nearly crack top 10, and earn double what Tyler "Ninja" Blevins has raked in since he returned to the platform.

The list doesn’t just include streamers, with the eighth highest earner being a creator of Twitch extensions known as Altoar. His creations allow streamers to add custom donation sounds, or give viewers details about a streamer’s World of Warcraft inventory, and have earned him over $3M in the past couple of years, comfortably outstripping the majority of folk trying to earn a living by actually performing online.

Where are the esports channels?

The idea Twitch is a platform for gamers is supported by the top names, many of whom are "variety" game streamers, but interestingly you have to go quite a long way down to find esports stars and their earnings. Outside of ESL CSGO and other accounts like Riot and RocketLeague, you have to go to the last page of the top 100 to find individuals who are top-level players in esports games, with Joseph "Mang0" Marquez, Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf, and Seth "Scump" Abner just scraping into contention.

Also included in the link are files that point to Twitch and parent company Amazon working on a competitor to Valve’s Steam marketplace, imaginatively titled "Vapor". This wouldn’t make Amazon the first company to try and create a Steam competitor, but it would probably be the wealthiest player to enter that arena to date and tie in well with Amazon’s Prime gaming service.

Twitch has confirmed the leak is real, including all the code and confidential information contained within, and the original leak was listed as ‘part one’, which implies there is more to come before the nightmare is over for the Amazon-owned streaming giant. We will continue to update the story as more information becomes available.