Two Major Gaming YouTube Channels Hacked

Hackers hijacked at least two prominent gaming-centric YouTube channels this week, one of which has 2.39 million subscribers. The two known hacks have targeted gaming history channel DidYouKnowGaming and let's-play-based Super Beard Bros. DidYouKnowGaming first revealed that scammers hijacked their Google account in a Friday tweet.

"The DidYouKnowGaming Google account was just hacked," a channel rep wrote. "We just lost access to YouTube. Working on getting it back. If anyone knows someone who can help, let us know."

Well shit. pic.twitter.com/CxvH14g9D8

— DidYouKnowGaming (@didyouknowgamin) April 28, 2023

The DidYouKnowGaming account, which Shane Gill created, was soon rebranded by scammers promoting Ripple, a cryptocurrency company that has a questionable reputation. It's unclear if Ripple has an actual affiliation with the hackers, but the scammers at least want to pass themselves off as Ripple to the channel's 2.39 million subscribers. As of press time, all of the channel's videos have been privatized. Its sister channel, DYKG Clips, seems to be unaffected by the hack.

Following DidYouKnowGaming's hack, Super Beard Bros. — a channel chronicling gameplay sessions of Jirard "The Completionist" Khalil, Alex Faciane, and Brett Bayonne — was also hacked. Khalil noted that they were "working to get this fixed ASAP." Luckily, the team was able to regain control of the YouTube channel. However, they did have to republish every single video on the channel. And, of course, YouTube's subscriptions feed bugged out and turned that process into an even bigger headache.

Thank you to everyone who contacted us – it looks like @SuperBeardBros got hacked alongside with @didyouknowgamin – We're working to get this fixed ASAP.

— Jirard The Completionist Khalil (@Completionist) April 28, 2023

"Hey just as an update to all of you folks who are subscribed on [YouTube] to [Super Beard Bros.] – We are actively republishing videos and some videos (most of them) are videos/promo videos for older content that are being published as new videos. We are so sorry – we are trying to stop it," Khalil wrote. "We are aware that it's probably making lots of you folks unsubscribe because of the rapid amount of videos that are pinging your feed. We can only do so much but we are giving it our all. Thank you."

YouTube has not issued a public statement on the hacks as of press time.