Overnight, a third-party gained access to three major accounts on gaming livestreaming video site Twitch, leaving offensive comments in place of video titles and descriptions.
The three channels affected — Xbox, PlayStation, and e-sports giant ESL — were left with video titles comprising a mixture of offensive language, fake game announcements, and comments on the controversial Xbox exclusivity of recently announced adventure game Rise of the Tomb Raider.
A Twitch representative told Polygon that the accounts were likely compromised at Gamescom, the largest video game trade event in Europe, by someone gaining access to logged-in computers.
“We’re deleting the offensive VODs [videos on demand] as soon as we find them and are alerting individual teams at the venue,” said the rep.
Twitch has removed all archived content from the compromised PlayStation and Xbox accounts for now, meaning there is currently no access to archived broadcasts from two of gaming’s major players. At the time of writing, past broadcasts were still available on the ESL channel.
“As a precautionary measure, we temporarily removed highlights and past broadcasts for those channels since it’s in the early hours of the morning in Cologne,” explained the rep. There is no word on when this archived content will return.
While it seems the accounts were not actually hacked, it probably wouldn’t hurt to change-up your Twitch password. Oh, and don’t forget to always log yourself off if you’re using a public computer.