Twitch is making changes to combat viewbotting on its platform as concerns about artificially inflated view counts rises.
Viewbotting refers to the act of artificially raising the number of viewers watching a given stream using automated programs, which are generally referred to as “bots.”
While this practice has been around for some time across many social platforms, its effect on streamers has been a hot topic of conversation as of late — particularly where Kick and Twitch are concerned.
Most recently, former Counter-Strike pro and prolific streamer ‘shroud‘ joked about recommending botting to his fellow broadcasters, arguing that Twitch “doesn’t do anything about it.”
Just two days later, Twitch published a statement regarding viewbotting, where they confirmed that they are making changes to their code to help identify viewbots more accurately.
Twitch is cracking down on viewbotting
The official Twitch Support X account tweeted out the statement on July 28, 2025, assuring users that they have teams that are dedicated specifically to ensuring the validity of viewers on streamers’ channels.
“We recently made changes that meaningfully improved our ability to identify viewbots, inauthentic viewership, and other potentially fake engagement. These changes will roll out over the next few weeks,” the statement reads.
“So, if your channel was viewbotted, or if some of your viewers are artificial or inflated, you will see an impact to your channel’s viewcount. This also means that third party sites that publish unverified Twitch viewcounts are going to see changes to that data over time.”
Twitch’s CEO, Dan Clancy, provided additional insights on these changes in a quote-retweet, where he reiterated that the platform “always [tries] to detect and eliminate viewbots,” but clarified that it can be a “tricky” process.
“While I know for some of you it has been frustrating, we wanted to take our time to make sure we were not inadvertently filtering out real users,” he wrote.
“I wanted to highlight that bots come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes streamers may be actively working with third parties to inflate their numbers. In other cases, the bots may be used to harass streamers. We don’t want either type, because Average Concurrent Viewers (ACCV) is intended to be a measure of the people that are watching the streamer at any given point in time.”
Clancy ended his statement by describing viewbot detection as a “cat and mouse game” between Twitch and third parties attempting to avoid detection, and promised to continue monitoring and updating their viewbot detection system.
Twitch is just the latest streaming platform to make a statement about viewbots. Earlier this month, Kick also commented on the subject after prominent broadcaster Trainwreck accused ‘99% of streamers’ of view botting.
“We need to do a better job with the people who are skipping the line of discoverability by viewbotting to the top of each category or section,” Trainwreck argued.
“We live in a time where viewbotters are being rewarded, & legitimate, hard-working streamers are being left out.”
Kick was quick to issue a statement, assuring users that they are working to combat viewbotting on their service.
“Viewbotting unfortunately, is an issue that all streaming platforms face,” they said on X. “We’re actively learning how to best navigate with such roadblocks by tweaking KCIP. Doing our best with the tools we currently have. Trust me, it makes our jobs harder, too.”
Content shared from www.dexerto.com.