Streamers accuse Twitch of slashing their viewership by not counting lurkers

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Twitch streamers are claiming the platform reduced reported viewer counts starting in October 2025. They believe a recent update stopped including lurkers – people who watch without interacting – in the total viewer numbers. Several creators report that their average number of concurrent viewers has dropped by as much as 50%.

Streamer CozyZozie explained the problem, stating, “Twitch recently updated its system to prevent paying for ad views from viewers who aren’t actually watching them (like bots). Because of this, viewers who don’t participate in the chat-often called lurkers-are sometimes incorrectly identified as bots, which lowers the reported view count. Over the last week and a half, my average concurrent viewership (CCV) has decreased to about half of what it’s been for the past year.”

It’s frustrating because I don’t think people are getting what I’m trying to explain in this video.

Basically, Twitch recently put out an update to stop people from getting paid for ad views when viewers aren’t actually *watching* them – think bots and things like that. What’s happening is that people who are just lurking – watching without interacting – are now sometimes being flagged as bots, which means their views aren’t being counted…

— zozie 🔜 twitchcon san diego (@cozyzozie) October 1, 2025

I’ve been hearing the same thing from a lot of other smaller and mid-sized streamers. HunnieVT put it really well: “Every time Twitch says they’re making changes to fight bots, we see a ton of us with our CCV – that’s Concurrent Viewers – getting cut because Twitch isn’t counting lurkers anymore.” It’s frustrating because Twitch knows it’s not streamers with just 5-50 viewers who are causing the bot problem. It’s the ones who are already successful, inflating their numbers with hundreds, even thousands, of bots.” It feels like they’re punishing us for something the bigger streamers are doing.

Whenever Twitch announces updates to fight bots, you consistently see smaller and mid-sized streamers reporting that their CCV (Concurrent Viewers) has been significantly reduced because Twitch is no longer counting inactive viewers – those who are just lurking.

Twitch understands that the issue isn’t caused by streamers with only 5 to 50 viewers. The problem is…

— Hunnie (@HunnieVT) September 30, 2025

Streamer BabyyyGrim mentioned, “I’m not sure if this is how the game is meant to work, or if it’s an unintended consequence of the latest update designed to fight bots, but my actual viewer count has been roughly half of what the viewer list shows for the past few weeks.”

Valan commented, “I’ve also observed this recently, and it’s quite disheartening-particularly for those streamers who are just starting out. I’m not certain what Twitch has altered, or if they’ll even recognize the issue. However, the important thing to consider is: how can we, as content creators, adjust to these changes or voice our concerns?”

Several people have tried to confirm these figures independently. Sw33tsTTV stated, “Don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t real, it’s definitely happening. I was running an extension and doing manual counts live during my stream yesterday. My manual counts consistently agreed with the extension’s data, and I even visualized it on a graph.”

Don’t listen to anyone who says it isn’t happening – it’s definitely happening. I saw it myself with an extension and live handcounts while I was streaming yesterday.

My handcounts consistently agreed with what the extension showed, so I was tracking the data on a graph. (Unfortunately, I missed a small portion in the middle because of an issue with Twitch…

— SW33TS 🌸 (@Sw33tsTTV) October 1, 2025

Popular streamers like Trainwreckstv also expressed their concerns, stating the system is unfairly penalizing legitimate creators. He said, “It appears Twitch’s efforts to combat viewbotting are primarily affecting and silencing creators who aren’t using bots, while the viewership of those actually using bots remains untouched.”

As a longtime Twitch viewer, it really frustrates me to see how their anti-viewbotting system seems to be working. It feels like they’re mostly going after people who aren’t even using bots, and suppressing their viewership, while the channels with the most obvious bot activity are completely untouched!

I honestly don’t understand how they’re running this program. It seems to me, there has to be…

— Trainwreck (@Trainwreckstv) October 2, 2025

What has Twitch said?

As a longtime Twitch viewer, I was really concerned about the viewbot updates and how they might impact people who just like to lurk – you know, watch without interacting. Twitch leadership had said lurkers wouldn’t be affected, and back in August, Mike Minton, their Chief Product Officer, actually told TopMob that they’d specifically checked. He said, “Lurkers are unaffected by the viewbot update, and we checked our internal data to confirm this.” He went on to explain that their system looks at a lot of different things to figure out if an account is a bot, and they’re really careful not to remove anyone unless they’re 100% sure.

CEO Dan Clancy clarified at the time, “It’s crucial to realize that the system we employ to identify fraudulent ad traffic operates independently from how we calculate ACCV. When we block bots instantly, we must ensure we aren’t mistakenly blocking genuine viewers.”

The viewbot detection tools we recently launched went through many revisions. Initially, we discovered that the tool was too sensitive and incorrectly flagged legitimate traffic from several sources.

Even with those promises of things being okay, a lot of creators report that their data doesn’t seem right, and more and more people are getting upset about it.

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2025-10-03 18:50