Fish leaks streamer’s credit card details

A fish has leaked a streamer’s credit card details and spent money on the Nintendo Switch eShop live on stream.

A streamer’s fish revealed his partial credit card details to the public and spent money on the Nintendo Switch eShop while the streamer was away.

A social phenomenon sprung up overnight in 2014 when over a million people played Pokemon Red via Twitch chat, an event called Twitch Plays Pokemon. The viewers of the stream would input commands into the chat, which would then be translated into the game.

The project lasted for 16 days, and against all odds the viewers managed to finish the game. People were surprised that Twitch chat was able to complete the game, as there were many people in the chat who tried to sabotage progress, and many close calls in some battles.

Since then, people have tried to recapture the magic of that initial phenomenon, with Twitch streamers setting up similar projects with different games and different input methods.

One recent popular method has been with fish. The fish will swim around their tank, with their movement tracked by a camera focused on the tank. The movements of the fish are then mapped onto buttons on a controller, effectively allowing the fish to control the game.

YouTube streamer Mutekimaru has this system in place for his fish, and often leaves the house to let the fish stream and play Pokemon Violet by themselves. There’s no home button mapped to any of the fish’s movements, so there’s normally no way for the fish to interact with anything outside of the game.

That changed in a recent stream, however, when the Pokemon game crashed and the fish were free to traverse the console’s home menu. Unfortunately, Mutekimeru had his credit card linked to his Nintendo account, and the fish were able to get up to some mischief.

The fish managed to navigate their way to the Nintendo Switch eShop, where they then purchased 500 yen ($5.50 AUD) in eShop credit, partially exposing his credit card number. They then downloaded an app, and spent his rewards coins on a profile icon. The fish also changed Mutekimaru’s profile name, and then kindly shut down his console for him.

Thankfully, Mutekimaru received a notification of the spent money on his phone, and was able to put a freeze on the account before the fish could do any further damage. After reaching out to Nintendo and explaining the situation, the streamer was able to get a full refund, in what was likely the first time a fish-related refund has been issued by the company.

The fish leaked the streamer’s partial credit card number to thousands of viewers when buying eShop credit. Picture: YouTube

Fish might not be the only non-human streamers taking the internet by storm. Twitch streamer Pokimane has said she’s scared of future AI streamers, saying that recent improvements in AI content have shown that human streamers could be entirely replaced in the near future.

It’s something that’s already starting to happen, too, though it’s not perfect, as seen with recent controversy over an AI-powered Twitch streamer that started saying a number of insulting things on-stream.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.