Twitch viewership drops sharply after crackdown on viewbotting

Twitch has rolled out an update targeting viewbotting, exposing how many streamers had been inflating their audience numbers artificially. The platform’s Support team confirmed that channels using viewbots would see their numbers corrected, and the results have been significant.

Since the update, thousands of creators have reported a steep decline in viewership, with average concurrent viewers, watch hours, and related engagement metrics falling noticeably. According to industry analyst Zach Bussey, the overall drop has ranged between 5 and 22 percent, affecting everyone from small streamers with fewer than 100 CCV to some of the top 500 creators on the platform.

The fallout has sparked wider criticism across the streaming community. Viewbotting, long dismissed as a background problem, has been shown to harm both advertisers and smaller creators. By inflating numbers, streamers and agencies made Twitch less reliable as an advertising platform while simultaneously limiting the discoverability of genuine creators who relied on organic growth.

Several high-profile names have spoken out on the issue. On August 23, xQc claimed on X that major talent agencies and streamer groups had engaged in widespread viewbotting, calling it “ad fraud.” He argued that these agencies manipulated advertisers and Twitch’s algorithm to benefit larger creators at the expense of smaller ones.