In August 2025, thousands of Twitch streamers noticed a sudden drop in views and watch hours. The reason wasn’t a lack of interest in content—it was Twitch’s latest crackdown on viewbotting, the use of fake accounts to artificially inflate live view counts.

What Happened

In late July, Twitch warned creators that viewership numbers might change as new detection systems were introduced. The update targeted:

• Viewbotting – inflated viewer numbers through bots.
• Inauthentic viewership – non-organic traffic on streams.
• Fake engagement – artificial chat activity or interactions.

Shortly after, many of Twitch’s top 5,000 streamers recorded their lowest-performing streams of the year. Analysts estimate sitewide viewership temporarily dropped between 5% and 22%, depending on the time of day.

A quick update on viewcounts. We have teams and tech dedicated to ensuring that the views that show up on channels reflect actual viewership, and aren’t artificially inflated in any way. Ultimately, metrics on Twitch should represent the real and growing communities that show up… pic.twitter.com/Pr6XaoSCfP

— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) July 28, 2025

Why It Matters

• Trust in the platform. According to Steam Charts analyst Nazar Babenko, more than 41,000 Twitch channels showed signs of suspicious traffic in Q2 2025, with over 10% exhibiting persistent viewbotting.
• Advertiser impact. Artificial views have cost advertisers millions, leading several brands to reduce budgets on Twitch and Kick. This shift hurts small and mid-sized creators the most.
• Creator groups hit hardest. High-profile streamer xQc noted that members of content creation collectives seemed to lose the most viewers in the crackdown, as some relied on inflated engagement for sponsorship deals.

Twitch's crackdown on viewbotting has intensified significantly over the last 48 hours.

Many top 5,000 streamers are experiencing their lowest-performing (CCV) streams of 2025.

Sitewide viewership is down 5-22% (depending on the hour) compared to the previous week. pic.twitter.com/FgKIAVyMXS

— Zach Bussey 🇨🇦 (@zachbussey) August 23, 2025

Twitch’s Response

Twitch insists that overall viewership is not in decline. The company emphasizes that:

• Advertisers are not billed for fake views.
• Streamers are not paid for artificial traffic.
• Detection systems will continue evolving as bot services adapt.

Some streamers have already seen partial rebounds in viewership, but Twitch has confirmed that no rollback of its changes has occurred.

Great points here. I wanted to share some early findings from our upcoming Streams Charts whitepaper (releasing mid-September): in Q2 2025 alone, over 41,000 Twitch channels with 50+ average viewers had at least one suspicious stream, and more than 10% showed clear, persistent…

— Nazar Babenko 🇺🇦 (@wellenborg) August 23, 2025

Community Concerns: Is It a Glitch?

Many streamers initially believed the sudden decline was a Twitch glitch, since even small creators with just 5–10 average viewers reported losing a significant portion of their audience. For those channels, viewbotting seemed unlikely, which fueled speculation that the platform’s detection system may have been overly aggressive. While Twitch maintains that the drop is tied to the removal of inauthentic traffic, the fact that low-viewership streamers were also affected has left parts of the community questioning whether genuine audiences were mistakenly filtered out.

What It Means for Streamers

If your Twitch channel suddenly shows lower numbers, it doesn’t necessarily mean your audience has disappeared. The drop likely reflects the removal of inauthentic viewers. While it may feel discouraging, this shift benefits genuine creators in the long run: fewer bots means fairer competition and better visibility for authentic streams.

Twitch’s crackdown on viewbotting has reset inflated numbers across the platform. For honest streamers, this is an opportunity — your real audience now matters more than ever.