Kick co-owner Trainwreck has shared new details about how bad viewbotting has become, claiming that some streamers are paying $20,000 a week for advanced bots.
In the world of streaming and content creation, views are extremely coveted, as they are a major indicator of someone’s popularity and can lead to big sponsorship opportunities.
As such, there have been numerous allegations of viewbotting over the years, with Kick staff even claiming the site’s biggest streamer, N3on, had over 60,000 bots inflating his broadcast totals.
In the past, Trainwreck has insisted that viewbotting is “worse” on Twitch than Kick, with the purple platform housing the “number one” viewbotted streamer.
However, on a November 14 Twitch stream, Trainwreck revealed new details that he’s learned about viewbotters after speaking to developers that he works with.
“They’ve calculated that some of these viewbots that we encounter have to cost between $10,000 to $20,000 a week!” he exclaimed.
For so much money, you’d expect these bots to be pretty advanced – and according to the Kick co-founder, they are. Very much so.
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“I’m talking fully automated, IPs are completely spread. Like, the most basic viewbot, every IP’s gonna show up from one country, if you catch my drift. I’m sure you can guess which county. But there are some complex viewbots now that ping IPs, like one IP per goddamn city around the f**king world. None of them overlap!”
With so much technology put into these bots, one might think they’re undetectable. Train claims there’s a way to catch them, but won’t reveal what it is at the risk of the viewbotting technology adapting.
“Clout is a hell of a drug,” he added.
Last month, the US Federal Trade Commission enacted a new rule that bans “fake social media indicators,” including viewbotting systems, effectively making them illegal.
However, not everyone was convinced the new rules would be effective, with streaming sensation Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel claiming the law would be “impossible” to enforce.
