Mentioned in this article Games: Fortnite

Twitch has over 100 million active monthly viewers watching millions of hours of content—and much of that viewership is focused around esports titles and their respective events. Over the past month, Twitch has seen an influx of subscribers, with popular streamers such as Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins receiving up to ten thousand subscribers in just one day via Twitch Prime. That puts his total subscriber count at 85,000 and climbing, as hundreds of people continue to subscribe even during his offline periods.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Several streamers have speculated that the sharp rise in subscriptions come from compromised Amazon Prime accounts and bots.[/perfectpullquote]

Amazon Prime members number 100 million and counting, with each account receiving a Twitch Prime account, that allows them to subscribe for free to one broadcaster per month. Twitch was purchased by Amazon in 2014 for $970 million, just three years after the service went live. With its subscriptions accounting for a significant portion of its income, there are emerging concerns that this could be a case of accounts being compromised or bots being used to inflate subscription numbers.

Other streamers such as Guy, better known as ShortyyGuy, have also taken note of this steep rise in subscribers. Concerned that the subscriptions come from unknown viewers, who neither feature in the channel viewer list or the chat room, they speculate that the sharp rise in subscriptions come from compromised Amazon Prime accounts and bots.

ShortyyGuy elaborates via Twitter: “Channels, including mine, have been receiving spam Twitch Prime subscriptions from viewers not even in the channel viewer list or talking. It’s 100% compromised accounts and bots even though the sub count does increase and the streamer still gets paid.”

There has been no confirmation on the reason for the sharp increase of subscriptions, though one likely reason is the recent connection between Twitch and Epic Games’ Fortnite—a popular free Battle Royale title—that offers users rewards when connecting their Twitch account with their Amazon Prime account. As the numbers continue to rise, more streamers could start to express concern. The Esports Observer has reached out to Amazon for a statement on this issue.