Twitch Tries to Exterminate Bot Infestation With Legal Action

Making a name for oneself on the popular video game streaming network Twitch is a bit of a rough job these days, particularly with around 100 million monthly visitors struggling for attention. To scramble to the top of that pile, some of Twitch's broadcasters have been shelling out cash to companies who shower their channels with bogus viewers and followers for a price. Yesterday, though, Twitch announced it was sick of it and that it was doing something about it besides its usual built-in safeguards. The biggest offenses in this regard come from just seven sources, it turns out, and Amazon-owned company is now suing all of them.

Matthew DiPietro, Twitch's senior vice president of marketing, calledthe botsa "persistent problem" in a blog post on Twitch Friday. Sometimes, he notes, the bots do far more than merely make a certain channel look like it has more followers and viewers than it actually does; sometimes they "harass other broadcasters in order to attempt to deny them partnership, or get their channel suspended."

That "partnership" is the holy grail of user-side Twitch broadcasting, as many of the site's most popular streamers—such as those who can maintain an average viewership of 500 people—get to share in Twitch's ad revenue. By lying about how popular they actually are, broadcasters who use the bots and their "falsely inflated statistics" potentially keep users who've build up their audiences by charisma alone from sharing in that wealth.

The new legal action, DiPietro said, represents a "third layer" of defense against the problem alongside Twitch's safeguards and its human moderators. And the site's not pulling any punches. In the 35-page complaint for the lawsuit, Twitch asks for everything from the transfer of ownership of the offending domains to Twitch or their cancellation to court orders barring payment processors from working with the offending sites. It piles on the evidence, citing violations of everything from trademark infringement and cybersquatting to tortious interference and unfair competition.

The document also spells out the specifics of the services, such as twitch-viewerbot.com's offer of 475 viewers, 300 chatters, and 4,000 followers for $38.99 per month. Twitch makes a strong case, and it's difficult to see how the sites in question could contest it.

"Ultimately though," DiPietro said in the post, "the best way to stop viewbot sellers from profiting off of empty promises is to not buy their services."

Now to see how well that works out.