Controversial pro-gambling Twitch clone, Kick.com, serves 404 error when accessing streamers pages; has the site been hacked or taken down?
When viewed, every account and profile on Kick.com returns a 404 error message stating that the page cannot be found. This has fueled speculation that Amazon has finally taken legal action against the pro-gambling Twitch clone that is owned by Stake.com for allegedly using stolen source code.
RELATED: KICK.COM: Pro-gambling Twitch clone to be shut down?
Kick.com is a new streaming platform that has appealed to many disgruntled Twitch streamers due to its lax policies on censorship and gambling. However, several prominent Twitch streamers have claimed that the pro-gambling livestreaming platform is nothing more than a Twitch clone that allegedly uses stolen and leaked source code from Twitch.
An unknown 4chan user in October 2021 claimed to have stolen 125GB of data from 6,000 internal Twitch Git repositories. On an online image board, someone joked, “Jeff Bezos spent $970 million for this, we’re giving it away for FREE.” This was in reference to Amazon’s purchase of Twitch.
The breach at Twitch affected a wide range of services, including but not limited to, public-facing goods, proprietary research and development initiatives, subsidiary companies, internal systems, and employee storage spaces. Additionally, databases containing private data, such as the streamers’ earnings, were taken.
We spent some time searching through 6000 Git repositories for secrets and sensitive data, and while most of the attention has been on the exposed streamers’ revenues, our results suggest a much more significant problem that stretches far beyond just this one breach.
Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker noted that the colour scheme of certain parts of Kick.com’s user interface, including reminders and notifications, was still based on Twitch’s. A screenshot from IMGUR showed that Kick.com’s embedded video player still displayed the Twitch logo.
If the IMGUR screenshot is authentic, then there’s proof that Kick.com used the stolen Twitch sourcecode to create their streaming platform which would mean that the company is in a lot of legal trouble. That could explain why all users profiles have been completely scrubbed from the site.
What really happened?
Strangely enough the error pages are only visible to logged out users. If you create an account and log in you will be greeted with a “BeGambleAware.org” warning popup that reads,”This is a gambling related stream and is intended for adult audiences. By watching you confirm you are over the age of 18.”
All streams are available to logged in users which mean this is likely just a technical issue that has yet to be fixed. Considering it’s Christmas, this probably wont be resolved this weekend.
Even though Kick.com has been the subject of a number of controversies ever since it was launched to the general public, the website continues to see exponential growth on a daily basis because to its lenient content policies and alluring 90/10 ad revenue income split.
The streaming of “adult only” games that include sexual activity and nudity is something that Twitch does not permit on their platform, regardless of whether or not you set your stream to be restricted to viewers over the age of 18. Kick.com, on the other hand, allows for the broadcasting of such games.