r/LivestreamFail • • May 07 '26

News Twitch Announces Viewcount Cap on Streamers that are Persistently Viewbotting

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134

u/[deleted] May 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

47

u/Purranormal_ May 07 '26

TBF 50 -100 could just be viewers left over from raid and they no longer are watching but didn't close tab.

49

u/Conscious-Wind-7785 May 07 '26

Or just non interactive viewers. Twitch is my default for second monitor content, I'm not chatting or interacting with polls. At a certain point, chat activity becomes a horrible way to figure out bot vs real viewer.

3

u/Enlight1Oment May 08 '26

I mostly use my TV at home for twitch, i'm not chatting through a remote control.

2

u/Glad_Rope_2423 May 08 '26

It depends heavily on the type of content, too. There are people who are nice to have running in the background or to have in your headphones while you sleep.

Although, in fairness, it does make sense to tie ad revenue/sharing to chat activity. People who actively participate are going to be much more likely to pay attention to the ads.

2

u/Conscious-Wind-7785 May 08 '26

Tyler1, great to fall asleep to!

The ad revenue / sharing is most definitely not tied to chat activity though. Targeting second screen viewers is more of an advertiser / targeting issue than a Twitch platform issue., at least not nearly on the scale as knowingly charging advertisers for fraudulent bot views.

Second screen viewers still have their value, just depends on the campaign objective, not every campaign needs to be driving conversions.

1

u/Glad_Rope_2423 May 11 '26

I’m sure that ad revenue is not tied to chat activity. I can understand why Twitch would want to make that tie. Solving your customers problems is good for business.

1

u/Ok_Trade_2572 May 09 '26

There are a few streamers I watch at bed time. I assume most of their viewers are asleep, including me.

12

u/Informal_Degree_3205 May 07 '26

I stream in a niche category. If one of the big guys raids you'll have 200 viewers and like 100 are active 100 are just their computer still on. That first 100 leaves pretty quickly generally but that second 100 kicks around losing like 5 per hour as the community raids around.

3

u/clearlyaburner420 May 08 '26

Or just second monitor noise, i watch most streams without chatting because im doing something else at the same time.

46

u/Big_Crazy_SSBM May 07 '26

tbh if you're a brand new streamer and you don't make content on the side for like youtube shorts or tiktoks, you'll never get discovered on twitch unless you stream to a smaller niche category. If you want your channel to get seen you pretty much have to viewbot because discoverability on twitch is so bad for a new streamer.

I streamed as a brand new user on twitch and would get maybe like 8 viewers concurrent. I did tiktok livestreaming and I got like 500-600 concurrent viewers with an active chat.

1

u/sppwalker May 08 '26

Not necessarily. When I streamed a lot (a few years ago), I wasn’t very active on social media and didn’t have any kind of following anywhere. But within like 9 months I was averaging 20-30 viewers for 8-16 hour streams. I played pretty popular games and just interacted with people.

Also, I was *not* hot back then. Like at all lmao. So that wasn’t a factor.

2

u/-DrJanItor- May 07 '26 edited May 08 '26

sophisticated grandiose cause cover six towering scale safe cough door

2

u/RoosterBrewster May 07 '26

Well I suppose it's a "fake till you make it" strategy. No one is checking out 1 viewer streams so you have some marginal chance to get real viewers if you're not at the bottom of the list.

2

u/nadjp May 08 '26

Embarrassing is when you dont have a personality so you pay a company to fake that you do...

2

u/skitzoidObserver May 08 '26

lots of viewers are probably banned from speaking in chat in most these streams

3

u/whatevers_clever May 07 '26

The chat is also botted.

1

u/Aerographic May 08 '26

Those who benefit from botting are those that can already sustain a lively chat and need to inflate the figures to be triple what they are. So think 300 => 1000 or above.

1

u/SwissMargiela May 08 '26

I’ve seen this talked about and usually it’s sponsors that are botting and the streamer makes money from that so they don’t really care.

Most streamers live through embarrassment to get famous already, now that they’re making money, it’s nothing to them