TECH NEWS – Not everyone uses Amazon’s service, Twitch cleanly, although a cursory examination would not reveal any trickery.

Twitch’s data was leaked pretty heavily in October, revealing how much money the bigger streamers are raking in. It started to raise serious questions in Turkey, Middle East Eye reports: in short, several Turkish streamers (who don’t have that many followers) have been getting a lot of money from bits. (Bits are a currency used on Twitch to donate to streamers. A bit is equivalent to about one cent, and 500 bits can be bought for 7 dollars, which is where the Twitch profit margin comes in.)

So, where does money laundering come in? The thieves donate vast amounts of bits from stolen credit cards, which the intermediary then refunds to the requested accounts, and they get about 20-30% of the revenue. Grimax, a Turkish streamer, says, “This is something that many of us have been aware of for a long time, but we couldn’t [convince] Twitch and the owner Amazon nor the audience for years. We waited for the prominent names on the platform to talk about this issue, as I and mid-level influencers like me weren’t loud enough.” He was previously approached, too.

BBL Legoo, who plays Valorant, wrote in a Twitlonger (archived here) that he had received about $4,000 on his channel. He has since been suspended from Twitch, and a former friend contacted him with the offer, of course saying it was legit, that he would get the bits from the ads… “I jumped like a fool and said okay. Later, when I realized that the Bits were anonymous, I became suspicious and wanted to quit. But since I was on the rise at that time and the person who did it had a trump card [on me], even though I told the person many times that I didn’t want to continue, I was forced to do it,” he wrote.

From a translation on upcomer.com, we learnt that Mehmet Yağız “cNed” İpek was also involved in the case, although he was supposed to have wanted no part of it. BBL Esports got rid of several of its members (e.g. Legoo) because of this.

The scandal was so big that even the Vice President of the Turkish Republican People’s Party (CHP), Gürsel Tekin, was alerted and asked the country’s Financial Crimes Investigation Commission to open an investigation. According to him, because of their age and their tweeting, streamers can quickly end up here because a specific age group does not understand what is happening. According to Haberler, more than 2,400 Turkish streamers were involved in money laundering, laundering almost ten million dollars. And Twitch refused to confirm any specific figures to PCGamer, with a spokesperson for the site saying, “Recently, members of the Twitch community have expressed concerns toward the legitimacy of some creators’ revenues in Turkey. We want to assure our community that we do not hesitate to take decisive action against accounts engaged in prohibited conduct. We take efforts to combat and prevent financial fraud on Twitch regularly. In September alone, we took action against over 150 partners in Turkey for abuse of our monetization tools and have worked with those affected who have reached out. We will continue to identify and remove any broadcasters found to have engaged in financial practices that violate local laws or Twitch policies.” No details were provided—what a shame.

That sounds pretty harsh.

Source: PCGamer