Twitch hack spills the beans on Amazon's Steam-like game store codenamed Vapour
First the Facebook blackout and now the Twitch hack… but we’re only halfway through this week so who knows what the rest could bring? Sure, Facebook tried to calm everyone down claiming it was some unfortunate timing with the backbone routers that needed to be taken down for maintenance purposes, yet conspiracy theorists could easily speculate that this is just a cover-up for some obscure hacking event. Coincidentally, Twitch got hacked almost 2 days after the Facebook debacle. Is it really a coincidence, though? Anyway, the Twitch siterip leaked via torrents also shows a bunch of references to a platform codenamed Vapour, which is now believed to be Amazon’s own Steam-like digital storefront.
Vapour appears to integrate most of the current streaming features offered by Twitch combined with specific support for popular gemes like Fortnite and PUBG. It is also tied to a game called VapeWorld, which seems to be built on the Unity engine. Some of the VapeWorld assets include 3D emotes that are already integrated in the Twitch chat (Bob Ross etc.), plus specular and albedo maps. Twitter user Sinoc229 is suggesting that VapeWorld could be a VR chat game that has been stuck in development hell since virtual reality did not really take off as previously hoped. Commenters on Sinoc229’s post further point out the existence of a “metaverse” folder that might suggest Amazon’s intentions to integrate NFTs and other crypto-based tokens.
The Unity code comes with custom plugins for developers and we could soon discover some other hidden projects, as users familiar with the Unity engine try to compile the leaked code. We are still waiting for an official statement from Twitch.