Twitch streamer Tyler “Trainwreck” Niknam is not impressed by the top streamers on the platform, claiming that most of them are using view botting to boost their viewership.
While streaming over the holiday break, Trainwreck said that he was confident that “90 out of 100” top Twitch streamers are “blatantly view botting.” But not only that, he felt they were “massively view-botting.”
View botting is when streamers artificially inflate their viewership using illegal tools, software, and services. This can sometimes include chat activity bots that appear in the Twitch chat, making it even more difficult to know if streamers are implementing fake viewers or not. This is something that goes against Twitch’s guidelines, and streamers caught using view bots are almost universally banned.
Why Trainwreck has accused Twitch streamers of view botting
To many in the streaming community, claiming that 90% of the top streamers are lying about their views may come across as salty. Trainwreck even said he may appear to be on some “schizo-delusional s—.” But he has some allegedly legitimate reasons to believe that fan-favorite streamers are lying.
During the stream, Trainwreck claimed that he gained access to Twitch’s “backend,” allowing him to see all of the streamers’ statistics. From what he witnessed firsthand, Trainwreck concluded that many streamers are artificially increasing their live viewership.
According to Trainwreck, only himself and Jaryd “Summit1g” Lazar out of all the top 100 had maintained a “99-percent logged-in viewership average.” This means that when they go live, 99% of viewers were logged in and showed activity across Twitch. Other streamers ranged from 45% to 85%, leaving him very skeptical.
“To have a consistent 15% always watching logged out… You know, statistically, after day three or four, [those viewers] would make a f—ing account to log the f— in because you get… It’s just not user-friendly when you’re logged out,”
he explained.
Trainwreck said that fake viewers could also be created by fans who want to boost their favorite streamers’ numbers. Either way, Trainwreck felt that view botting was the only thing that made sense based on the statistics he saw behind the scenes. While Trainwreck couldn’t prove it, he said that “it seems to make sense” based on the backend numbers.
Olivia has worked in media ever since graduating from college, with her coverage ranging from traditional newspaper reporting to digital coverage of all things gaming, online betting, and nerd culture. She has traveled around the world pursuing that coverage, from the far coasts of the United States to the busy downtown core of Tokyo, Japan. Olivia’s favorite games include Overwatch and Super Smash Smash Bros, and she has been published at Esports Illustrated, Inven Global, EsportsInsider, Upcomer, and elsewhere.
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