Twitch filed a lawsuit against “view, follower, and chat impersonation bots” which are used to fake viewer and follower counts of Twitch streamers. Bot’s have been always frustrating to twitch according to Marketing SVP Matthew DiPietro in his blog post as it has damaging effects to the entire twitch community.
These bots are used by broadcasters who believe their higher viewers and activity will make them more famous, and give them more success. Sometimes it’ll be used to “troll” a broadcaster in order to get them denied for partnership, or get the channel suspended. All of this is possible because of the bot services that these sellers are providing.
Twitch has solutions in place that can detect and remove these viewers, this lawsuit is another solution that Twitch has in its efforts to protect Twitch viewers and broadcasters from its malicious activity.
The full details on the complaint, can be seen here, and it gives a rundown on how Twitch’s Partnership Program works, and gets into how the bots disrupt it. “Defendants offer bot services intended to deceive Twitch into believing that broadcasters are more popular than they really are. Defendants claim that their services will artificially inflate broadcasters’ viewership to make their channels appear higher in directories and trick Twitch into accepting broadcasters into the Partnership Program, with its promise of additional revenue,” it says. “These deceptive actions inflate viewer statistics for some channels while harming legitimate broadcaster channels by decreasing their discoverability. That, in turn, hurts the quality of the experience community members have come to expect from Twitch.”
Among these allegations made in the lawsuit there are also, federal trademark infringement, unfair competition, cybersquatting, fraud, breach of contract, and more. Twitch is seeking injunctions against the bot-makers, transfer of possession of their domains, an order barring payment processors from providing them with service, and restitution, legal fees, punitive damages, and whatever else the court feels like throwing in.