StableRonaldo, Lacy fire back at Kick CEO's viewbotting claims
Twitch streamers StableRonaldo and Lacy have responded to allegations of viewbotting from Kick CEO Ed Craven, pushing back against those claims while themselves claiming that they had turned down offers from the streaming platform.
Viewbotting has become a hot topic across all of streaming of late, with multiple top streamers admitting to inflating their numbers. Those confessions followed comments from Kick CEO Eddie Craven, who claimed that many streamers rely on fake viewers to boost their KPP payouts. During a recent Kick Talk episode, Craven accused StableRonaldo, Lacy, and other former FaZe Clan streaming members of inflating their viewership through the use of viewbots.
The two streamers have since responded, with StableRonaldo pulling up his Twitch revenue in trying to make his case.
StableRonaldo and Lacy respond to viewbotting allegations
Both StableRonaldo and Lacy felt moved to respond after Ed Craven claimed that the majority of the top FaZe Clan members were using bots to inflate their viewer count, suggesting that up to 90% of their viewership was in this way inflated.
StableRonaldo was the first to respond to Ed’s claims, taking to his stream to show his January Twitch earnings as apparent proof of his genuine viewership. Typically, creators accused of viewbotting avoid showing revenue dashboards because metrics can quickly expose inflated numbers, such as low engagement or weak subscriber counts relative to viewers. On top of that, Twitch generally filters artificial traffic when calculating payouts.
By revealing $266,000 in monthly revenue, Ronaldo argued that his numbers don’t line up with claims of heavy bot audiences. That said, ad frequency still affects earnings. Even with inflated viewership, heavy ad loads can still boost revenue. Matthew “Mizkif” Rinaudo has alleged that Ronaldo runs up to 20 minutes of ads per hour, which could add up to his impressive revenue despite the use of bots. Ronaldo has previously said his ad load was capped at around 13 minutes.
The numbers demonstrated at least partially back Ronaldo’s claim. Channels accused of viewbotting on Twitch usually show weaker subscriber conversion, but StableRonaldo pulled in roughly 1,000 subs on January 1. That said, it’s possible that he could still be boosting his viewership, just not to the degree Craven implied was possible.
Lacy says he rejected a Kick deal
It’s also worth noting that both Lacy and StableRonaldo have claimed that they recently turned down Kick deals. Responding to Craven’s allegations, Lacy pushed back by suggesting that the Kick CEO had previously offered him a $5 million annual deal. He then questioned why such an offer would be made if he were indeed viewbotting.
Lacy
To back his own claims, Lacy shared apparent chat screenshots with Kick, where he was asked to stream two hours of non-gambling content as part of a deal that never came through. He then responded to Ed’s claims by pointing to his own Kick revenue.
Ed had previously said that during Lacy’s brief time on Kick, he averaged around 100 viewers, using that as a contrast to his Twitch numbers. Lacy countered by showing a payout of roughly $5,000 from a single Kick stream back when he had streamed for one day. He compared that to typical earnings for channels averaging 100 viewers, which are usually closer to the $100-$150 range. His argument was that if he really averaged 100 viewers, his payout wouldn’t be as high as it was.
While both StableRonaldo and Lacy offered some reasonable claims to at least buffer against Craven’s suggestion that 90% of their viewership could be had through viewbotting, there’s really no straightforward way to definitively determine whether someone is viewbotting at all. Even advanced detection systems, like the ones used by Kick, are better at identifying who definitely aren’t viewbotting than at conclusively drawing conclusions around those who are.
For example, Ed Craven previously noted that Sneako’s KPP from Kick is purely authentic, as it’s much easier to tell who is pulling organic viewers than the degree to which those using bots are inflating their viewership.
Featured image credit: StableRonaldo
Fariha Bhatti is a long-time gaming writer who loves competitive FPS games and slots with particularly fun themes. She got her start playing classic games developed by SNK, from legendary fighting game series The King of Fighters to challenging platform franchise Metal Slug. She now spends most of her time playing Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 while working her way through new slot releases to find her next favorite. Fariha has been published at PCGamesN, TalkEsport and ONE Esports.
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