Popular video game streaming website Twitch is taking a stand against bots that inflate the view counts for some users' videos to the point that they would even sue sellers of the illegal method.
Twitch Senior Vice President of Marketing Matthew DiPietro announced in a blog on Friday that they will be suing those who sell the bots that can inflate users' views on videos. The company is ramping up their efforts in battling fraudulent view counts.
The website provides opportunity for game streamers to gain some viewership as they stream their video games live for people across the globe to see. Popular games that are often streamed are MOBAs including Riot's League of Legends and Valve's DOTA 2.
Seven active sellers of the view-inflating bots will be sued by Twitch, PC World has learned. The company has already filed a formal complaint in the United States District Court in San Jose.
Inflation of view counts on videos and streams are not exclusive to the video game streaming site. Even YouTube has its own problems when it comes to fraudulent view numbers.
One reason why users would resort to the said methods is because the higher the number of views on a video, the more likely that users will discover it through recommended videos. It indirectly affects the potential number of subscribers, which is YouTube's basis for their payroll in addition to the total number of views.
Twitch believes the best way to stop the viewbot sellers is to avoid buying their services in the first place, Polygon reported. Nevertheless, Twitch said that they still have other means of detecting and removing fraudulent views in order to protect and promote honest streamers from their site.
"We at Twitch are well aware that view-bots, follow-bots, and chat-impersonation bots are a persistent frustration. Exploited by a small minority, these services have created a very real problem that has damaging effects across our entire community," DiPietro said on his official Twitch blog.
Twitch added that the inflated number of views can obscure the real streamers with quality videos and such as the system might automatically recommend the higher-view videos. Their increased attention to the matter will result in the decrease of fake viewers on the site.