Popular streamer Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel recently lost two million followers, but thankfully for him, most of these accounts were bots that were artificially boosting his numbers and messing with his stream statistics.
Twitch is working hard to clamp down on bot activity on the platform, officially banning over 7 million bots already with more to come. According to Twitch Tracker, SullyGnome and SocialBlade, xQc has lost 2.2 million followers over the course of a few days and is the first major streamer to be heavily impacted.
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Twitch streamer xQc wasn't the only streamer impacted by Twitch's ban, but a significant portion of the recently banned bots followed the popular streamer. With how chaotic xQc can be in games such as Overwatch and GTA Online, he's entertaining enough to bring in tons of viewers as he gets banned in one game just to move onto the next one. These viewer and follower bots artificially boosted various account numbers, including xQc's, and Twitch continues to ban them as they reveal themselves. The numbers shown through Twitch tracking websites match drops in followers tracked directly through xQc's official Twitch analytics.
Popular streamer xQc has been working hard to become the most-watched streamer thus far in 2021 and it's likely that the views will continue to roll in despite the removal of so many bot accounts. Twitch has been targeting viewer and follower bots since April 14th and xQc's channel has been taking a hit ever since. Considering two out of the seven million banned bot accounts were following xQc, his Twitch channel seems to be the most heavily impacted by these changes but a majority of his viewers remain legitimate accounts.
The follower count of many channels is going down, including xQc's follower count, which was all the way up to eight million prior to Twitch's crackdown on bots. Now his Twitch page says he's down to around 5.5 million and counting. Twitch has officially confirmed that it has identified over 7.5 million bots that break terms of service on the platform by follow-botting and view-botting, but it's likely that the crackdown will continue throughout the month.
Many followers may have left xQc's stream after he was banned from NoPixel's RP server, but it looks like losing these bots caused a bigger void in followers according to Twitch statistics. Twitch streamers have been notified that their accounts may see declines in follower or viewer count, but the streamers that rely on the platform to pay bills may feel more anxious than usual as they see number dip. With more bots on the platform doomed to be banned, it'll be interesting to see how many followers xQc has lost once Twitch is done.
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Source: Dexerto