Kotaku Finds Twitch Might Be Inflating Views Through Gamepedia

A report from Kotaku has found that Twitch might be inflating some streamers view counts through the use of embedded streams on Gamepedia. The article goes on to elaborate that Gamepedia uses Twitch embeds at the end of their article, and it looks like those embeds are counting towards Twitch’s viewer counts.

A Twitch spokesperson talking to Kotaku about the investigation says that “The Twitch video player can only be initiated when the player is in view in the browser. When a viewer scrolls down the page, the player initiates once it’s in view. Views should not be inflated due to this technical setup.” They added, “Since the player only initiates when in view in the browser, any ad impressions would also be in view and counted as a viewable impression.” However, Kotaku’s interviews with streamers who have been featured in Gamepedia embeds has found that “Five streamers who were featured on Gamepedia’s pages told Kotaku that their Twitch view count has been boosted by dozens, hundreds, or thousands of viewers as a result of being embedded in Gamepedia.”

One such example comes from streamer SirSlaw, who had his regular 805 viewers flooded by Gamepedia visitors, to the tune of 17,357 in one day. This increase certainly helped push him up the rankings and expose him to more traffic, however the process is clearly not natural and probably not sustainable.

For more on the investigation, check out the full article, here, and for more streaming news, check out the Twitch loading issues from earlier today, here.

Header image via Jim Cooke