Hackers Are Being Paid To Stream Snipe TimTheTatman
Hackers are reportedly being paid to stream snipe popular content creators like TimTheTatman, with bigger streamers making for bigger payouts. Stream sniping is when someone watching a Twitch stream uses a streamer's live video feed to hunt down and kill that streamer in a competitive multiplayer game. This typically occurs in battle royale games, where high player counts mean that queueing up for a lobby at the same time as a streamer can easily result in you both being in the same match. Streamers like TimTheTatman have dealt with being hunted in this way before, and Ninja once claimed he would never play "Fortnite" again due to snipers, but this situation is a bit different.
Fifakill, a "Call of Duty: Warzone" streamer, claims to have spoken with notorious stream sniping hacker IHACKFORTHEWIN, who told Fifakill about a Discord server where people pay money for them to stream snipe content creators. The payouts are contingent on getting the targeted content creators to end their streams. And if you don't think that someone would log off over a stream sniper, don't forget that Ninja once claimed he would never play "Fortnite" again after being sniped multiple times.
Getting repeatedly stream sniped can be frustrating for creators, who typically just want to perform well and entertain their audiences. And it looks like TimTheTatman isn't the only person being targeted.
The targeted Twitch streamers
After speaking with IHACKFORTHEWIN, Fifakill named a few of the targeted streamers who came up in conversation, which included himself, FaZe Kalei, MuTex, and the aforementioned TimTheTatman. Fifakill also said that there were more people being targeted outside of the people he specifically named. Although TimTheTatMan has not yet acknowledged Fifakill's tweet or the alleged paid snipers, the streamer has acknowledged in recent months that at least one stream sniper has regularly hunted him in "Warzone."
A couple of streamers confirmed that they had been dealing with hackers. FaZe Kalei tweeted that one night someone stream sniped her for 8 hours straight, somehow continuing to get into her lobbies even after she'd blocked them and hidden her screen. She also shared that hackers have uploaded video evidence of their "bounties" to YouTube in order to get paid, although she didn't provide any links. Tommey tweeted that someone spent two hours getting into his lobbies to hunt him, although he didn't seem too bothered by it.
Unfortunately, it seems like this problem won't be solved until Activision can finally fix the hacker problem that has always plagued "Warzone." Activision did announce that its new anti-cheat system, Ricochet, would be coming to "Call of Duty: Vanguard" and "Warzone" in the near future, but it remains to be seen if this new system will put a stop to snipers like IHACKFORTHEWIN.