Dutch

hi

[Devin @DevinNash]

Tapping in on the Twitch viewbotting discussion as an actual agency brand advertising executive.

This Twitch post is unlikely to convince any advertisers or streamers that the issue is improving.

Here's how to actually address this problem -

Viewbotting is an engineering and incentives problem disguised as a cultural one. There is no solution to this problem that can ever be achieved via culture change or moderation. People are debating the efficacy of the solution in Twitch’s post when the entire implementation isn’t even relevant.

Given Twitch’s track record, no one should believe Twitch will enforce this “viewer cap” change appropriately even if they did have the proper backend data (and I think they don’t.) They won’t even enforce against popular streamers who have viewbotting programs visible on their screen, streamers who roleplay bringing slaves on their broadcasts and feed them treats, or broadcasters who advocate blatent political violence, and so on.

Many streamers are on their 8th or 9th temporary bans for various TOS-breaking content. No one believes Twitch's intervention via moderation will change anything.

So again it’s a matter of engineering and incentives. I’ll break down each one. But first a productive question to ask. Why does Youtube Live - which now eclipses Twitch’s live viewership by 40% - have nearly no problems with bots and viewbotting?

Well first the engineering problem. Viewbotting gets solved by better detection, pattern recognition, IVT analysis, device fingerprinting, IP patterns, watch-time anomalies, removing off-platform embedding, and other boring backend stuff. As Dan correctly noted, these are things you can’t be public about because they’ll quickly see counterplay from the viewbot services. You just have to lock in and fix it. Google has spent billions of dollars solving this because advertisers don’t like invalid traffic. Their IVT rate now sits at a healthy 11% or so, easily beating competing live services like Tiktok (24%) and Twitch (35%+.)

Twitch hasn’t taken this problem seriously. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Twitch, and no team member has ever communicated to me or any of the agencies I work with about their IVT rates accurately. On the contrary it often feels like they throw raw viewership numbers around in pitch decks and presentations as the REASON to go advertise there. That used to work, but money is getting smarter in digital. Brands correctly care about return on spend and engagement with real people rather than just the perception that there are viewers around.

You need both bravery and expertise in engineering to make massive changes. Twitch actually has phenomenal engineers, many who were brought on by the former CEO to develop the world’s most advanced CDN (content delivery network) from 2015-2022 before Youtube Live recently surpassed it. But I’m not sure the company has the bravery to make real, necessary changes that many commentators on this post have noted must happen. Successfully “fixing” this would represent a 30-35% global drop in viewership for a website already perceived as ailing against its competitors.

To solve the engineering side you just have to apply more of the above technical solutions and spend money and time. Communicate with advertisers, refund us in high IVT events, keep improving your CDN, etc. It’s not a moderation issue, it’s not a viewer cap issue, that’s crowd pandering and will fix nothing. Both advertisers and the community begged for years for attention on this topic, while viewbotters bled us all and collected millions of dollars. Twitch has eroded trust and should just stop making these posts to the public. Users have lost tolerance for the platform and just need to see the actual changes.

The second problem is the incentive problem. Every system to succeed on Twitch is set up based on the number of viewers you have. The entire Partnership/Affiliate pipeline is viewership based. The entire discovery funnel is viewership based. Sponsorships are calculated on CCV per $. And the entire culture of the website is “more viewers = better.” So of course everyone will do anything possible to get more viewers. This not only encourages viewerbotting but also toxic streamer culture (IRL nuisance streamers, etc) because, again, it’s all about the views.

On Youtube Live monetization rewards sustained engagement and overall channel performance. Ads, super chats, channel memberships, etc. Discovery is pushed by an interest-based recommendation algorithm. Viewers will find you because of interest alignment - not because you have the most viewers. Barely anyone viewbots there because there’s no point. Adding viewers won’t help your channel, and Google’s AI/ML will instantly and automatically suppress your channel and shut off your ads.

It is frustrating that the C-Level over at Twitch keep posting about viewbotting as if it’s going to get solved by human moderation. As if Twitch is going to magically have an amazing enforcement team with “the data” that goes after the serial offenders and returns everything to normalcy. This is all solvable, even from where Twitch is now. But you have to make the investments on the engineering/CDN side and just get to work. Everyone is waiting and hoping for these changes.

Twitch’s viewbotting epidemic is a downstream effect of what every major streamer and industry professional told them would happen for years. They didn’t implement discovery engines, they didn’t change the incentive systems, they didn’t invest aggressively against obvious botting cases, and they didn’t communicate. Now they have an existential advertising and creator crisis. You reap what you sow.

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@timthetatman @CallofDuty @TylerTeeP @adzb3_ still a cooked game, the izzle makes more and more sense everyday

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@KaleiRenay Thats your country 💀💀

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@Mileage_impo @adzb3_ this u?

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@Symfuhny @Nadeshot are we back????

[sweet @sweetdreams]

STOP IDOLIZING TWITCH STREAMERS. 👍

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@Symfuhny

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@Fifakill_ Big step to take action and fix it, you got this feef ❤️🫡

[Devin @DevinNash]

Phenomenal thread by xQc. I'm going to back it up with data and expose a bit more. This botting problem has stolen millions of dollars from legitimate creators. It's also a deliberate tactic employed by several major agencies and streamers. -> 🧵

First, aside from an agency or two, most don't intentionally view bot their talent. It's the streamers themselves. What ended up happening is the viewbotting streamers moved up in the directory. Over years of doing this, they were discovered because of Twitch's kingmaker system. So major agencies picked them up and now just look the other way. They all have the same data I have, but them ignoring the viewbotting is easy, they have plausible deniability, and it represents 30-40% of their revenue in many cases, as we'll see below.

xQc refers to 'ad packages' - these are sponsorships given to streamers. A brand agency will win a portion of yearly advertising budget from a company. Either that agency or the company will reach out to talent agencies, who will then provide their roster. The average deal will involve several talent from multiple agencies.

The deal structure is pretty simple:

- Deliverables: What the streamer needs to do for the deal. Usually: Stream for (x hours, usually 1-3), chatbot rotation timer, on screen banner rotation timer, !command, info section, sometimes CTAs and sometimes a Youtube video.

- Rate: Generally a streamer can expect to earn between $1 and $3 per CCV (concurrent viewer) per hour. Aka a 100 viewer streamer can expect a sponsorship (with these deliverables) of between $80-$120 an hour.

Rates are almost always counted with CCV as the only metric in mind. Agencies are lazy, and in all my time in the industry (since 2015 now?) I've never seen an actual formula employed for these deals outside the ones we used. The industry average rate is $1.27 (over 2000 deals we have data on executed 2010 -> 2023) but the rate trends higher for higher viewer streamers.

Top 1% streamers are rare, and agencies push up their rates. Their industry average is about $2.19 per viewer, per hour in the top 100, with many exceeding $3. So a 20,000 viewer streamer will earn about $43,800 per hour, minus 20% ($8,760) or total = $35,040.

If you read my last thread, you'll know that the problem xQc alludes to represents about 30-40% of total viewership on Twitch. Over the last 14 days, Twitch has made an 11% correction. Average viewers are down 11% (-252,770), and hours watched are down 11% (-84,930,847). Across all streams, there is -1.18 less viewers on average.

So now let's look at an example typical deal. A 10,000 viewer streamer with 30% viewbots earning $2/CCV will earn about $16,000/hour for sponsorships assuming a 20% take. Most agencies do a deal with the brand directly and then give out money to the streamers through separate contracts, and then lie and take closer to 40-50%, but that's another thread (heh.)

Anyway, the streamer with the viewbots earns the $16,000/hour. The agency earns $4,000 (20% of TDV) and everyone (except the ecosystem itself) is happy.

The same streamer without viewbots goes down to 7000 CCV. They now earn $11,200 an hour, and the agency earns $2,800. And this is assuming the rate stays consistent at $2/CCV - it often goes down.

You can see in this example, the streamer and agency lost 30% of the deal just from not viewbotting.

Twitch's policy is to NEVER ban unless they have definitive proof (bot shown on screen) of viewbotting. They state this is to prevent false positives (innocent people getting banned, or maliciously attacked.)

So now you know these numbers and that:

- This has been going on for YEARS (since at least 2017)
- It's almost impossible to get caught unless you're a complete idiot and show it on screen. (and yet some people still do!)
- The entire industry, including Twitch itself, is incentivized to let this problem walk.
- The problem is way worse than even Twitch corrected for over the last two weeks.

Now, earlier I mentioned the difference between brand agencies and talent agencies. Talent agencies have zero incentive to fix the view botting problem for the reasons above, so they just ignore that their streamers do it. But brand agencies represent brands first, and we care a LOT about how our advertising dollars are spent.

Brand agencies are incentivized to get the highest ROAS (return on advertising spend) so we are constantly looking for fraud. So when we see a 30-40% fraud rate on Twitch, that is a joke and we simply pull our budget to other sites.

For perspective, Youtube (Twitch's direct competition), has a 2025 IVT (invalid traffic rate) of 3.5%. Google Adwords is about 11% to 22% in the worst cases. However the CPMs are also a LOT better, and I pay between 40-50% less per 1,000 viewers than I do on Twitch.

So in what universe would I advertise on Twitch?

We became aware of this problem in 2021 or so and pulled our ads from Twitch to other social. In just our deal flow from 2022 -> 2025, it represents millions of dollars that would have gone to broadcasters. We put that money to great creators anyway on YT and other places. But sadly most of the money from the rest of the industry evaporated back into digital ads or traditional.

Even worse, most top brand agencies experimented with livestream ad budget over 2022 to 2025. When they all finally discovered this, they realized they got burned for hundreds of thousands of dollars with little to no ROAS, and so they left, probably never to return.

Viewbotting stole MILLIONS from legitimate creators, and pushed them down in discovery. The lack of action from Twitch, and the top streamers that do this, burnt out advertisers and quite literally held back the whole industry. A healthy advertising ecosystem with low IVT would have made Twitch look a lot more like Youtube is today, and represented tens of thousands more jobs for livestreaming creators.

So make no mistake that viewbotters are the worst sort of scum. I am grateful this topic is getting more attention, and hopefully with this context you can see why legitimate creators like xQc are so pissed off about it. It harms the entire industry including him. We are lucky to have people like him who stay honest and will talk about this when it's not popular to do so.

The reality is a few people made short term profit in exchange for the long term destruction of livestreaming as a whole.

Put simply, the viewbot problem is way worse even after this fix, people are still doing it, and even with the correction, it still won't bring advertisers back. It's absolutely a step forward and I applaud Twitch for that. But we have a long way to go to repair the damage that's been done.

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@brookeab @Symfuhny

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@Fifakill_ Syms favorite i heard

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@brookeab Goodboy i mean good job sym

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@KaleiRenay KKona murica fuck yea

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@zSmitOfficial @adzb3_ game is not real LMAOO

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@Fifakill_ @Echo1867 @LenunLH

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@charlieINTEL Can you please fix your game, thanks

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@CODUpdates

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@Fifakill_ Letsgo congrats feef! Worked your ass off, deserved 🥳🐐

[Dutch @dutch_support]

@Slacked happy bday 🥳