Real Example of Viewbotting in Live Streaming

A few months ago, we studied how publishers and brands can combat the rise in live streaming caused by viewbotting. Since then, this issue has grown into one of the defining conversations of 2025. As a reminder: In late July, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy announced a new wave of anti-viewbot measures, warning content creators that their view counts might decline as detection systems come into play. In Q3 2025, Twitch’s market share fell below 50% for the first time as a result of this crackdown, as discussed in our article Live Streaming Trends Report Q3 2025. The scale of inauthentic views on Twitch is visible in real time.

Now, we take a closer look at what the changes actually mean. In this article, we outline how successful Twitch’s crackdown has been in reducing the number of viewbots on its platform and how it compares to another live streaming platform: Kick. We also dive into real, recent cases of viewbotting with the MMORPG Knight Online to show you what viewbotting looks like behind the numbers.

TL;DR Takeaways by Stream Hatchet:

• Twitch’s viewbotting crackdown reduced the number of channels with suspicious streams from Q2 to Q3 2025, in some cases by up to 40%
• The viewbotting controversy heated up before the crackdown and forced Twitch to take action, with 48K mentions of “viewbots” in Q1 2025
• A detailed example of viewbotting can be found for Knight Online on Kick, with 42% of all views for the game’s top 100 streamers coming from suspicious channels

Twitch Responds to Viewbotting Discourse with Crackdown on Bots

By early 2025, talk of “viewbots” had taken over Twitch chat. 48K unique chats raised this issue in Q1 2025 alone: ​​A sign that viewers are growing frustrated with inflated numbers and fake engagement. This increase begins in 2024, with mentions continuing to increase as suspicion spreads in society. Streamers, viewers, and advertisers are starting to question how much Twitch’s viewership will increase, putting pressure on the platform to respond. By the time Twitch rolled out its detection update in Q3 2025, the conversation had turned into one of the top topics of the year with 53K chat mentions.

We decided to see how the hubbub about bots matched up with actual viewbotting activity. One way to measure bots is to look at the Registered Viewer Ratio (RVR): The ratio of hours watched by registered viewers compared to the total views of all viewers. If RVR goes down, it means more views are coming from unlisted sources (likely bots). That’s what happened in early 2024, when RVR fell by 9% as viewbotting chatter peaked. Twitch’s crackdown has managed to improve things since then, with RVR rebounding in Q3 2025 by 5%. This is proof that when platforms act decisively, fraudulent traffic can be curbed.

Twitch Manages to Reduce Suspicious Channels, Even as They Rise on Kick

We can also look at the impact of Twitch’s crackdown using other metrics. For our purposes here, we define a “suspicious stream” as any stream that has more than 100 viewers in the first minute even if the channel has no followers. Between Q2 and Q3 2025, the number of accounts with these suspicious streams on Twitch fell by 40%, from 29.4K to 17.8K. This is a big change in just one quarter, indicating that the platform’s detection systems are catching more inauthentic flows early on. Almost all of these suspicious accounts (over 95%) came from Russian-language channels. This shows how localized bot networks can be when exploiting platform loopholes.

As Twitch tightened its defenses, Kick saw the opposite trend. The number of suspicious channels on Kick more than doubled, jumping 164% from 7.7K in Q2 to 20.3K in Q3 2025. Turkish-language accounts dominate this suspicious activity, accounting for more than 60% of flagged channels, followed by English (17.8%) and Spanish (6.5%). This contrast highlights the increasing fragmentation of bot networks: When one platform cracks down, others seem to inherit the problem. Kick in particular faces an uphill battle with viewbotting because, as we’ve discussed, the platform works hard to clean up its image. So let’s see how this suspicious activity looks like in depth with a real example.

Example of Viewbotting with Knight Online and Kick Channels

Online KnightsA long-running MMORPG with a large following in Türkiye and a growing presence on Kick. Unfortunately, it is also a frequent target for viewbotting.

We want to demonstrate a new method for identifying suspicious channels here, which is very effective in quickly identifying odd patterns in viewership. For this analysis, we define “suspicious” channels as channels that display an unreasonable 1:1 ratio between peak views and average views. As you can imagine, it is very rare (almost impossible) for any stream to maintain peak viewership from start to finish without fluctuation. So, armed with these metrics, we dug into the number of views Online Knights.

The results are truly amazing. Among the top 100 Kick streaming channels Online Knights in Q3 2025, 57 channels were flagged as suspicious, representing more than half of active channels. These channels were responsible for 299K of the group’s 716K hours of total gaming viewing – about 42% of overall viewing. This is a very surprising number of hours watched that is being gradually increased by many channels that seem to have low viewership numbers. You might think that these channels are just hiding well, but observation of each channel by a human observer quickly discredits that idea.

This example from our dashboard shows exactly what suspicious channels look like in practice. The account “hnsimeeyne3gj” is streaming Online Knights on Kick for over 34 hours straight, yet somehow maintained a nearly perfectly flat viewing line (shown in orange). This is reflected in the channel’s key metrics, with peak concurrent viewers (314) and average concurrent viewers (303) nearly equal (resulting in the aforementioned 1:1 ratio). The actual audience naturally fluctuated, but here, the numbers barely changed.

Combined with the randomly generated usernames and lack of chat activity, it’s clear that this isn’t organic engagement. Instead, it suggests a network of viewbots designed to keep the number of streaming viewers locked at a constant, artificial level.

Suspicious channel for Online Knights also stands out for its uniformity. Many of these suspicious channels have almost the same peak to average viewing ratio; in the case of the channel shown above, it ranges between 250–270 peak CCV and 90–100 average CCV. These carbon copy statistics are a highly unlikely coincidence for organic viewers. Combined with random usernames and marathon airtime sessions, these patterns clearly point to coordinated or automated viewing behavior designed to manipulate visibility.

In contrast, secure channels tell a very different story. Peak and average viewership varies widely, reflecting the natural ebb and flow of actual viewership. Engagement increases during interesting gameplay or social moments, then naturally decreases. These streamers typically have more authentic usernames, shorter and more varied airtimes, and active chat participation: Clear indicators of genuine human interaction rather than scripted bot behavior.

We would like to emphasize that this case study is just one example; that this is not a special problem Online Knights or Kick: This viewbotting behavior is to some extent replicated in many other titles and platforms, and may not originate from the title or platform itself.

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Viewbotting may not disappear completely, but its influence is starting to change. As Twitch’s crackdown shows, meaningful change happens when platforms confront public pressure and back it up with clear enforcement. The drop of suspicious channels on Twitch in Q3 2025 proves that measures work, whether by filtering or scaring away viewbotting networks.

But it also shows how quickly bots adapt and find new homes on other platforms. For us at Stream Hatchet, we aim to maintain the visibility of these viewbotted statistics. Using a variety of detection methods, from ratio analysis to behavioral signals, we aim to filter out inflated viewership and highlight genuine viewership. That way, publishers, brands, and content creators can trust the numbers that determine their next big activation.

For more trends shaping the live streaming industry in 2025, download the full Q3 2025 Live Streaming Trends Report now: