A couple of days ago, streamer personality Trainwreckstv made a rather bold accusation, claiming that 90 of Twitch’s top 100 streamers are not only padding their stats when it comes to viewership numbers but are actually aggressively viewbotting – a practice that is in conflict with the platform’s terms of service. The statement was made by Trainwreckstv in his most recent Twitch stream while discussing NBA and sports betting.
If you are unfamiliar with viewbotting, it’s a practice in which any streamer can subscribe to a service that allows a number of fake accounts to join their live stream for the purpose of inflating the total viewer count. Viewbotting is not only limited to Twitch’s biggest streamers, however; it’s also a practice that’s been utilised by casino streamers for many years. In fact, most of the top-ranking casino streamers are suspected of inflating their numbers with the help of viewbots, particularly those streaming Stake.com and other crypto casinos. In fact, it is not at all uncommon to see new channels pop up with 15k+ viewers, meaning there is a good chance that a significant portion of the total viewer count in the slots meta is actually made up of viewbots.
While viewbotting is against the rules and may get a streamer banned, it hasn’t stopped big and small Twitch streamers alike from abusing the system as means to gain more visibility. Back in 2018, famed streamer Kevin Pereira was permanently banned from Twitch after his show, The Attack, was revealed to be heavily viewbotted.
With over two million followers on Twitch, Trainwreckstv is one of the most popular and influential streamer personalities on the platform. While he rose to fame as a gamer, these days, Trainwrecks is most widely associated with his gambling streams sponsored by crypto casino Stake.com. Ever since Stake.com was banned from Twitch, Trainwrecks has been busy trying to find other options for his gambling streams – with mixed results. The day before Christmas, however, the streamer took to Twitch to discuss NBA games and sports betting, but the conversation to a turn when Trainwrecks dived into the issues with viewbotting and what he believes is going on with the biggest streamers on the platform.
“I’m under the impression, confidently, that, in the top 100, at least 90 out of 100 are not only blatantly viewbotting, but we’re talking massively viewbotting. Cause you can’t tell at that point, right?”
Trainwrecks followed up on his statement by admitting he has no actual proof to confirm the allegations and that it could be a case of him coping with the idea of other content creators being more popular than him without offering the same substance.
“For the longest time, I sat there thinking, ‘Why are these streamers with my viewership average or higher than me by 20-30 thousand, why are they sitting there so worried about me?”
Trainwreckstv followed up on the claims by saying he believes he and another big streamer by the name of Summit1G are the only Twitch streamers to maintain a 99% logged-in viewership average, while the rest of the list falls short at around 45%. If the allegations turn out to be true, it would be another notch on the belt of controversies surrounding Twitch this year. While Trainwrecks has been critical of the platform ever since the Stake.com ban, Twitch has been under the microscope for controversies in 2022. It’s not known whether an investigation will follow amidst the most recent allegations made by Trainwrecks, but it’s safe to say that the statement alone has sent shockwaves throughout the streaming platform, with many of his fans agreeing that there is some truth to his claims.
