Creator of Unreal and Gears of War: "It upsets me that streamers earn more than game developers"

The drains of data on streamers’ earnings upset game designer Cliff Bleszinski. He shared his indignation with his Twitter followers.

Cliff Bleczynski. Photo — Official GDC (Flickr)”I fucking respect the work of content designers – it’s really not easy, but (…)

I get upset because many of them earn MUCH more than the developers whose games they stream,” Cliff wrote on Twitter, and clarified: “(…) I’m not saying that it’s bad if the creators earn a lot. I just want developers to be paid more.”

Cliff’s indignation is caused by information that became available as a result of the Twitch database drain. Among other things, the network got details of the earnings of the highest-paid streamers from August 2019 to October 2021.

According to the “leaked” data, many creators earn several tens of thousands of dollars a month. The “richest” Twitch channel for the specified period earned more than $9 million. We are talking about Critical Role, a group of voice actors, to which more than 800 thousand people have subscribed.

Meanwhile, according to the PayScale portal, the average salary of a game developer in the United States is $62,400 per year and about $6,000 per month.

The anonymous hacker behind the Twitch hack has promised that this is only the first part of the leaked content. He plans to promote the competition of streaming platforms, because the whole community is a “toxic cesspool”.