Twitch streamer brags about 100K viewers & is promptly banned for ’embed abuse’

A Twitch streamer has been banned after bragging about having over 100,000 viewers and getting called out for “viewbotting.”

Viewbotting has been a major issue in the world of streaming with some creators paying for bots to make it appear as if they’re more popular than they actually are.

On April 20, streamer ‘vpnninja87’ posted a screenshot of his Twitch stats to X, bragging that he had reached 100K viewers for the first time. The screenshot also revealed that he only had 39 unique chatters, which didn’t sit well with other members of the Twitch community.

FaZe Kalei was one streamer to take offense and put vpnninja87 on blast writing, “You have to be the biggest loser to not only viewbot but then flex your stats after you viewbot.”

“This is what glorifying egregious embedding (he openly says he embeds) looks like,” Gothalion chimed in. “There’s nothing for this worm to celebrate.”

Vpnninja87 defended his actions, comparing an embedded stream to standard marketing tactics.

Unfortunately for the streamer, this bragging may have come back to haunt him, as his account was hit with a ban for violating Twitch’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service.

The aforementioned Gothalion has been one of the biggest opponents of streamers who embed their broadcasts. Back in 2023, he even took the issue up with Twitch CEO Dan Clancy where the platform’s boss suggested that autoplay could be disabled on embedded websites.

This is hardly the first time a streamer has been banned for skewing their numbers. Earlier this year, Kick banned a creator after they showed how easy it was to code viewbots.

Although many Kick streamers have been accused of viewbotting, co-founder Trainwreck claimed that Twitch has its own problem, suggesting that the Amazon-owned platform houses the “number one” viewbotted streamer.

So far vpnninja87 hasn’t revealed when he’ll be unbanned or if he plans to continue using embeds to artificially inflate his view count.