If you notice less engagement from some of your favorite Twitch streamers, well they may be cheaters too it looks like…
Twitch Support recently announced that they went through and banned 7.5+ million bot accounts. If you don’t know the point of bots, here’s a quick rundown.
With the platform still rising in viewership, some streamers wanted to raise themselves in the rankings quickly and make more revenue, thus the bot accounts. You could buy bot viewers from some outlets, and they would send thousands of accounts to “watch” the stream. Thus, making it look like the stream was more popular than it actually was, which in turn would raise them up in the search results- basically cheating the system.
This is honestly long overdue. As some streamers have already been caught doing this and many more accused not just in the miniatures hobby, but platform wide.
Hopefully, this will force people to focus more on content and less on fast growth. With so many streamers on Twitch now due to quarantines, people who used bots were essentially cheating the hard-working streamers out there.
In Massive Clean-Up Twitch Banned Millions of Bots!
🛡️ We have been monitoring the rise of fake engagement on Twitch and have identified 7.5MM+ accounts that break our TOS by follow-botting and view-botting. We are taking action on these accounts and appreciate all of the reports about this issue.
— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) April 14, 2021
Bots not only raised people in the searches, and showed “fake” views, but also brought in more revenue. The bots were even made to send chat messages, meaning the engagement seemed much higher than it really was.
Bots boosted channels quickly while legitimate streams were being left in the dust. As a user, the bots could be fairly hard to notice and it really felt like you were endorsing a legitimate streamer.
If you see way less interaction on some of your favorite streams, well, this could very well have something to do with it! But, if you like the person, that doesn’t mean stop watching. If you found your favorite streamer, we guess it wasn’t all bad.
It will be interesting moving forward though to see which stream’s viewer count drops rapidly over the near term for sure.
This isn’t just something on Twitch though, most media platforms are filled with such stuff. It’s unfortunate, but in a like-driven world, sometimes people want to take the fast road to glory. But really growing a community is what Twitch and all the other platforms are all about!
Hopefully, this levels the playing field once again for new people trying to start up their own streams and they will be easier to notice.
Have you seen accounts grow seemingly out of nowhere? Did the fact some accounts were using bots bother you?
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About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Socials: @paschbass
About Travis Pasch: Travis has been a Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the 1990s, playing the game since Third Edition. Through extensive traveling, he’s seen a lot of the miniatures hobby from across the world, giving him a unique perspective on the latest gaming topics and trends.
Travis’s brother even owns a commission painting studio, where he’s picked up a lot of good advice and techniques for painting Warhammer and tabletop miniatures over the years, as well. Travis joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the lead writer since 2020.
Currently, he’s working on converting all his 40k Adeptus Mechanicus models and becoming a true tech enjoyer, complete with both sad and happy robot noises!
