Twitch’s CEO says it’s cracking down on fake views

Twitch‘s new CEO Dan Clancy has been putting in some serious face time with creators, joining them for live streams and opening up communication about long-standing platform policies and parts–like pre-roll ads (he agrees: they suck).

Now, KingGothalion has been the first one to hear that Twitch is apparently planning to crack down on streamers who boost their views by embedding autoplay versions of their streams on video games’ wiki pages.

Creators who do so can rack up thousands upon thousands of views from people who aren’t actually watching their content–they’re on the wiki for Apex Legends or Dead by Daylight, trying to answer some kind of gameplay question or look up lore. Because of the autoplay feature, they may not even realize the video is playing; it’s just quietly ticking the stream’s view count higher.

KingGothalion read off part of an email Clancy said him, where the CEO said “the idea is to do something quick by identifying a list of websites that are the worst offenders and prevent autoplay on these websites.”

“Again, this is a quick and dirty thing we could do easily while we think about a better long-term plan,” Clancy added.

Gothalion goes on to specifically mention Fextralife, a gaming news site that also produces game guides and runs a Twitch channel with 1.6 million followers. Ludwig first accused Fextralife of “stealing views” by embedding its streams in articles/wikis in 2021, and since then Asmongold, Moistcr1tikal, and Gothalion himself have all spoken up about its alleged unethical behavior.

It’s not clear exactly when Twitch might roll out this initial scorched-earth solution, but Clancy’s email is another sign that he’s trying to outreach–and maybe patch up the somewhat contentious relationship Twitch has with streamers after years of baffling policy decisions.