A number of large Twitch streamers, including Chance ‘Sodapoppin’ Morris, have seen their follower numbers double or more than double in just a day due to what seems to be an infestation of bots on the platform.
Usually on any social media/streaming site for that matter, gaining followers is generally considered a good thing, but recently on Twitch, several big streamers have seen their numbers absolutely explode through the use of bots.
Now, let’s make it clear before we go on that it’s highly unlikely that any of the affected streamers are to blame, as view or follow botting is a bannable offense on Twitch. Instead, it’s probably a random person or group of people behind the flood of new accounts and follows.
Around December 17-18, Soda’s follow count doubled almost instantly, rocketing him up to nearly 7 million overall — a gain of almost 3.5 million in just one day, numbers that are simply unheard of in any situation.
Morris wasn’t the only streamer to be affected though, not by a long shot. According to the third-party stat-tracking site twitchmetrics.net, all kinds of streamers on the platform are seeing insane follower growth over the last few weeks.
Just under Soda is Twitch partner Heelmike, who’s gained over 2.5 million followers since this situation began, and Gonedoc clocking in at 2.4 million gained. Next up was U.S. streamer Shofu who amassed 1.2 million, and lolnatie who got 890,000 followers to take her from just 10,000 to 900,000 in a day.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
Compare this astounding growth to Dexerto’s 2020 streamer of the year winner Nick ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff, who’s been steadily amassing followers throughout the month, for a nice solid and legitimate gain of just over 200,000.
Just looking at his followers and Soda’s tracked side by side, and it’s not hard to see why bots are most likely to blame. Nick’s graph shows a nice gradual increase, while Chance’s shoots up to more than double in just a day.
Now that we’ve established that it’s probably bots responsible for all these new follows, there’s one question that still remains — why would someone or a group of people go to all the trouble to bump up these unrelated streamer’s numbers?
Maybe those responsible are huge fans of each of the streamers and just wanted to give them some extra followers for the holiday. Whatever the reason, this is certainly one of the strangest situations we’ve seen on Twitch all year.
