A breach of the Twitch live-streaming platform has been officially confirmed, though the extent of the breach is still being researched. Meanwhile, there are a variety of claimed leaks said to have been shared as a result of Twitch being hacked. Those include payments issued to top Twitch streamers, as well as account information for Twitch users. One particularly interesting leak revealed the existence of an Amazon alternative PC storefront to Steam going by the name of Vapor.
The details about Vapor come from a torrent containing 125GB of data said to have been taken from the Twitch platform. Within this data are files containing code for an unannounced Amazon game named Vapeworld, as odd as that may be. Vapeworld is believed to be a virtual reality chat game. While that in itself is interesting, it's Vapeworld's associated files and containing folders that contain what little information about Vapor that are included in the link.
The best way to think about it is how Steam handles game installs for its storefront. When Steam users download a game, the game's files go into Steam's directory on the user's storage drive. That's how Vapor is presented in the leaked Twitch files. The Vapeworld game is shown to have been installed within a Vapor subdirectory, as if a Vapor user purchased and installed the game from Amazon's storefront.
There's a lot more information about Vapor beyond just a tree of folders leading to the Vapeworld installation, of course. It's just going to take a bit of work to dig into what those filed contain or imply. The heart of the idea, though, is that Vapor would be a storefront akin to Steam. It'd have its own SDK, and would be built into Vapeworld and potentially other games, like how Steam works with certain multiplayer titles.
Another key aspect of Vapor is that it's apparently designed to have meaningful integration with the Twitch platform, which is likely why it and Vaporworld were included in the leak in the first place. Details about how Vapor integrates with Twitch aren't clear, but likely revolve around helping users stream or access Twitch features like chat while in-game.
It's unclear what the status of Amazon's Vapor platform is. Obviously, it has not been officially announced. That could mean that it's just a matter of time before Amazon enters the PC gaming wars, making it an immediate competitor to Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the Microsoft Games Store. It could also mean that Amazon isn't confident it wants to enter the market and is simply testing the waters. Odds are, this isn't the last PC gamers have heard about Vapor or Vapeworld.