A recent livestream from Twitch streamer Emiru has started a big online debate after her viewer count suddenly dropped during a stream and then quickly went back up. The moment happened while she was playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on Twitch. A clip of the stream was later shared on Reddit and other social media sites, where many people began discussing whether the strange viewer change was caused by viewbotting or simply a Twitch error.
In the clip, Emiru’s stream reportedly had around 16,500 viewers before the number suddenly fell to around 8,000 or 9,000 viewers. Just a few minutes later, the stream gained about 7,000 viewers again and almost returned to the original number. Some tracking websites reportedly showed the sudden drop and recovery, while others did not because they update viewer numbers less often. The whole situation reportedly lasted for only around eight minutes.
Sudden viewer drop during Emiru stream sparks online arguments
After the clip spread online, many social media users accused Emiru of using viewbots. Viewbots are fake viewers sometimes used to make streams appear more popular. Commenters believed that the sudden and quick loss and gaining of thousands of viewers was an unnatural act, as it resembled the behavior of bots, which were disconnected and connected again after a while from the same botting service.
