Twitch’s confirmed Oct. 6 data leak included the purported payout information of Twitch’s highest earners. In screenshots now widely shared on Twitter, the list of Twitch royalty is overwhelmingly male.
At the top of the list is the professional role-playing collective CriticalRole, a group composed of a number of popular voice actors. The rest of the top 100 streamers on the list are entirely male except for three female streamers. Moroccan-Canadian variety streamer Pokimane sits at No. 39 on the list, while American ASMR streamer Amouranth is No. 48 and German musician Sintica is No. 71.
Kotaku argued that the perception that female creators are “stealing views from men” is clearly false, according to the data from this recent leak. For many, these rankings have been a wake-up call and timely reminder about the obvious lack of diversity among the platform’s most successful creators.
Upon hearing about the Twitch leaks, Pokimane spoke on her Oct. 6 stream, saying “Twitch can’t force people to subscribe to female streamers more.”
She also said that misogyny likely plays a factor in why female streamers are less successful on Twitch than their male counterparts. “So long as the majority of the gaming community is white male, the majority of the top [earners] will also be white men,” Poki said.
According to Los Angeles-based influencer marketing agency Mediakix, Twitch viewers are 65 percent male and 35 percent female. Of the male audience, 73 percent are under the age of 35. Mediakix also noted that Twitch’s core demographic of young male users “has been shrinking over time.”
