WinterGaming uses viewbots -- here's the evidence against him and 35+ other viewbotters and a guide on how to catch them!

ShaneGoocher · 14 時間前

You guys don't even know. Nick is the Monk of Twitch. Man on a mission.

tischt · 14 時間前

Man compared to this DetectiveDickbutt is a fucking casual.

Evistential · 14 時間前

After seeing Morrow's post I decided to do a little research today too. Here's what I found.
The first album was my attempt to find a something suspicious by clicking on random viewers and going through their profiles. They all were following 1 person with the same icon.

The second album was going to start from A-Z but Winter hosted BaseTradeTV after I finished at B. All the viewers between A-B left the stream leaving me with profiles that may have been legit. That is where I stopped.

edit: grammar

NeoDestiny · 15 時間前

holy fuck

EDIT:

Some of my viewers have been doing different analyses of stream numbers across Twitch to check for suspicious stuff with Winter's stream. There's a ton of data they've gone through, but here's just one interesting graph out of many: http://imgur.com/a/bJwht#0

The thick lines are viewership numbers for the day and the thin lines are people logged into Twitch chat (not necessarily chatting). The first three images are pretty basic, as viewership rises, chatters slowly rise in tandem. The first suspicious image is the fourth one, which links to my stream. There is a HUGE boost initially with no surge of chatters. I can explain my numbers, though, due to the fact that you can see how many people are logged into my website at any given point in time, which explains the gap.

Then the last picture is Winter's.

lol

All of the raw data can be viewed here - http://scraper.overrustle.com/

anonoflondon · 13 時間前

I'm sensing a pattern:

winter lied about 4k viewers in his stream being real. nVidia lied about 4G of ram in the 970 being GDDR5.

alispery · 13 時間前

I remember seeing him for the first time. He wasn't famous at the time, only 50 viewers or so. But I was a lowly silver and thought his advice and tips were really valuable.

Was really glad when he broke the 1000 viewers. Remember when he got like 3k viewers for the first time because he was hosting famous players like minigun playing Starbow.

Good for him, I thought, since he really worked really hard in order to get it.

But then began the troll on new players like me. Him drone killing his opponent and laughing about it... That wasn't fun for me and definitely not fun for the player receiving it. It wasn't educational, it wasn't good.... The accusations of having bots...

And now this.

If this is 100% true the best winter can do is to come forward and come clean. Restart. He made the scene worst by damaging those that are actually trying to bolster their viewership 100% legit. Those that just a few months ago were like himself.

I think the community would very much prefer honest viewership, good games with people his own skill (even though with fewer tips, but far more valuable tips) than him steamrolling noobs like me with superior mechanics while having forged viewer numbers.

I hope he can return to the educational stream he started with.

LzGaMeR · 14 時間前

Way to go nick! Nailed it.

oOOoOphidian · 13 時間前

It looks like Naniwa's birthday present came just on time.

synergyschnitzel · 14 時間前

Does not surprise me that Imbacoaching is on the list as well. There is just no way he gets 1k viewers to watch him act like a child all day long.

nrta · 13 時間前

You didn't address him hosting people. He would have 2-3k viewers and when he hosted someone, only about 300-400 of those viewers carried over. Bots don't move to the hosted channel.

niudropout · 7 時間前

Here is what people need to realize ESAY WARNING:

As long as he claims he has nothing to do with it, twitch can't prove he is doing it so they are powerless to ban him. The thing is if being view botted was bannable without proof (impossible to prove) it would be used as a weapon against people (ironically people would maliciously viewbot winter until he was banned).

Winter's snake oil is his fake popularity. Winter continues to draw real viewers from being at the top of the stream lists and because of this he draws real revenue. I am curious if the people who pay him ad revenue and sponsor him realize his numbers are false, I am curious if paypal would process the donations of a liar, I am curious if the people who donate money to him and white knight him realize how much of a literally fake fucking dog and pony show this kid really is.

The reason you don't see twitch making a statement on this is because it is a massive flaw in their system...a system which at the moment is a huge pay day for the company, we are talking incomprehensible amounts of money. If there was a simple or perfect solution it would have been implemented long ago. Exactly how much revenue has been generated with false view numbers 1 million? 50 million? How soon until we see an advertiser take legal action?

View botting is relatively new, a quick search of google will show you a service at viewbot.net which can give you 10,000 viewers per month at $99.99. 333 viewers per day will easily put you in the top 10 and in most cases the top 5 in sc2. What I can't figure out is why more people aren't taking advantage of this service. Holy shit fuck that's a really fucking low price to be popular, as long as you don't look like a mutant and have a decent day job to fund your viewbot army you could be a top sc2 streamer for 3000 bucks a year and if you do some cute shit with a green screen dog and just be slightly entertaining, do some giveaways etc you are probably going to rake in a payday from subs, donations, sponsors and ad money...

As the advertising data becomes more and more flawed you will see some sort of blanket action being taken (lets be honest this isn't just a winterstarcraft problem). The dominoes will start to fall when twitch sees their first legitimate lawsuit. I believe eventually you will see some sort of captcha or "are you still watching" with captcha script implemented for "non premium" accounts, the sad thing is there is no solution that doesn't alienate the average viewer.

In summary winter is a historically massive faggot in the sc2 scene, everything from his fake dog to his "i'm the victim" response to being outed repeatedly. This kid is a sociopath with no soul and as a well informed community we need to continue to treat him like a pariah until he goes away or until twitch addresses view botters.

eliwood5837 · 14 時間前

inb4 "i didnt buy viewbots, someone just viewbots me to make me look bad !!111!"

JL235 · 14 時間前

I think something else you should do to help validate your work is to look at streams you think probably aren't view botted. Tournament streams, big name pro gamers streaming, and things like that. Preferably picked at random.

Bazooka821 · 14 時間前

http://i.imgur.com/xsEP5iY.gif

AGIANTSMURF · 13 時間前

This is obviously a highly controversial post (keep it civil). OP has put alot of time and work into it. While the evidence presented here supports the presence of bots on his stream, lets all keep in mind the possibility of Winter not being directly responsible (lord knows he has enough haters).

You can read winters response here

I think he has a right to be heard/seen so lets not bombard him with unreasonable downvotes.

AHJ- · 14 時間前

I don't think that Nvidea will appreciate being lied about the numbers before the sponsorship was signed. This is a serious business problem for sure.

spurx · 12 時間前

Wow this is crazy. Honestly Twitch has more to answer for than Winter imo. It's their responsibility to ensure the integrity of their service. I would be interested in seeing if any of these "bots" are present in channels of tournament events.

Great work Nick HotS, hopefully this encourages Twitch to take a closer look at the problem and make some changes to stop it.

Codonbyte · 12 時間前

Hey, isn't it against reddit ToS to do this?

Shouldn't winter be banned from reddit for doing that? I thought it was against the rules to ask for upvotes, no?

Here's the original tweet.

hendralisk · 13 時間前

i thought it was common knowledge

open sc2 stream for 5 min during random hour any hour, get 2k viewers. only jd/flash/foreign topdog would be capable of that

aQuaSC · 13 時間前

if you'd like to join Homestory Cup, better start viewbotting

flakeybanana · 14 時間前

Might want to throw in myththegamer's social blade stats (http://socialblade.com/twitch/user/myththegamer) . For some reason the person never loses followers. Compared to a legit channel, ill use Desrows's here (http://socialblade.com/twitch/user/desrowfighting), Desrow's stats have clear gains in followers and loss in followers which match his broadcast history. myththegamer's account is questionable as fuck.

Ansibled · 14 時間前

This'll be fun

sumzyy · 15 時間前

Cant wait

kitchenmaniac111 · 14 時間前

I was always confused about imbacoachings high viewer count, now i know why

QuanticPhog · 14 時間前

DRAMA BOYS

FloopzMcgoo · 13 時間前

Wow. The OP we need, but definitely don't deserve.

Sick work, Nick, DetectiveDickbutt would be proud.

SC2GIF · 14 時間前

Amazing work. Glad this case has been solved. All those saying its a waste of time are probably winter alts.

egil87 · 13 時間前

starts sharpening pitchfork

_TheRedViper_ · 13 時間前

Huh that's really interesting. I always used the "twitch looked into it" argument when this came up, but you have some really strong evidence there.
I wonder why twitch didn't detect it (they didn't care?, which makes them look rather bad tbh)

Voltz_sc2 · 11 時間前

Couldn't Nvidia and any other sponsors sue him for all the money they gave him and possibly more? He tricked them into thinking he was displaying and advertising their product to a certain number of people, when in fact, it was a much, much, lower amount.

Fictitious1267 · 13 時間前

That's a lot of work you put into this. Well done.

zelacor · 13 時間前

NVIDIA - Proud sponsor of disgusting personalities

nrta · 14 時間前

Other viewbotters that use the same bot:

http://www.twitch.tv/rswap http://www.twitch.tv/ammo_rs

xAngelDustx · 14 時間前

What a surprise... Kappa

xxSharktits_snipeRxx · 14 時間前

HERE WE GO

StarNaN · 12 時間前

My face when I read this

tailsdarcy · 14 時間前

Looks like the bots are being deleted guys. I think they are also changing who they follow right now too.

2yph0n · 13 時間前

Now this is the kind of drama that I can get behind!

worldchrisis · 12 時間前

yo evidence.zip

tommy_p1ckles · 10 時間前

mikehunt757v lol

CT_Legacy · 13 時間前

http://i.imgur.com/EgXrbsW.jpg

JL235 · 14 時間前

What percentage of those viewing his channel do you suspect make up his bots?

wasEnabled · 9 時間前

Good work /u/NickHotS.

Personally, I would like to have a response from Twitch rather than the streamers who have invested their time and energy on Twitch's service. Winter and others have worked hard on their streams so let's focus our energies on solving the problem with Twitch instead of potentially vilifying those who use the service. With this information it should be relatively easy for Twitch to flag accounts as suspicious and work towards verification systems to guarantee the legitimacy of their viewership numbers. The same viewership numbers that they report to their advertisers and to the users of their system. If in fact the streamers that are being promoted are being falsely represented and their viewership numbers are artificially inflated due to illegitimate external services then it's in Twitch's best interest to work to correct it and to protect their viewers, their streamers and their advertisers. Hopefully it would also help to restore the balance of viewers on the service and possibly reduce the confusion that some streamers feel when their stream doesn't attract viewers because they are not listed high enough on the channel list due to the possibility (or perception) of illegitimate viewership numbers on other streams.

I had done similar investigation work independently on another popular SC2 streamer last Friday (March 6th) when his numbers also jumped and I also discovered a series of odd accounts but when I asked about this situation on a few other streams folks on the chat got rather defensive so I dropped the matter -- thank-you /u/NickHotS for stepping forward with details.

NorthernSpectre · 5 時間前

Haven't really watched Winter, I tried once, but his Berlin 1938 esque chatroom wasn't really appealing for a dankmemester like me.

PureLegacysc · 14 時間前

winter is mid master with thousands of viewers... obviously he viewbots lol. i saw him host Uzi yesterday (grandmaster toss), winter had like 4k viewers at the time, and then hosted Uzi and Uzi only had 400ish viewers right off the bat.

Xaxxon · 10 時間前

unsubbing

Ur1nd4ng3r · 13 時間前

I'm sorry for Winter fans, they've been scammed so hard multiple times.

The most pathetic thing was when Dragon shown his kitty on stream and chat loved this (many donations), few days after Winter put on his stream that orrible dog gif. This was disgusting.

This is just an example of his, declared at last HSC if i'm not wrong, "marketing skills". He just copy what other streamers do (especially Dragon) + viewbots.

Jonas223XC · 13 時間前

I'm sure everyone is shocked

Lol wait no they aren't. When Winter gets 2,500 viewers while fOrGG has 400 viewers, you know that there is some bullshit going on

bcsahasbcsahbajsbh · 12 時間前

I was always 100% sure winter is botting. I remember it clearly: winter was being a comunity caster for dreamhack for the second time and got decent numbers doing that. After DH, his viewership declined again to his normal 300-500, coz hey...no one wants to watch a douche tryhard vs silver leaguers. BUT THEN, FROM ONE FUCKING DAY TO ANOTHER, he constantly gets 2000-3000 viewers without doing anything diferent, oh and ofc with the same dead chat.

yummywaffles_sc · 13 時間前

Why am I on this list? Going through the channels I see they all have 1k+ followers whereas my channel has a little over 300. Check every one of my followers, they're all legit as far as I know. I have been putting all of my effort into a full-time stream since January and have worked very hard to earn every viewer I have. You can see that my account is not being followed by HonorBuddha or any of the other signs that were mentioned in this post as evidence of viewbotting. I would like my name cleared from this list if it is at all possible as I would like to not be associated with these other accounts.

7125LikeMe · 12 時間前

We just need the botting service he uses to come forward and then he'd crumble.

Huggernaught · 10 時間前

It was always obvious he was viewbotting. He showed up out of nowhere and had 2k viewers from the moment he started streaming....

Rubberduddy · 5 時間前

Cant say I´m surprised by this. Just glad someone took the time to compile all the evidence. I wont be sorry to see Winter crucified and made an example of, seeing he was lying for so long. Lets hope Nvidia cancels his sponsorship.

SirFatalx · 14 時間前

I am pretty sure he was using bots even though people said he wasn't. It did not seem right with the amount of viewers he had at certain times during the night compared to others.

Quivex · 14 時間前

You know, it's really too bad. I was never a fan of Winter's stream, it just didn't appeal to me. But I thought that the viewbot rumours were just people salty about his success. I trusted him because I thought there was no reason for him to lie. But now, with all this evidence....Well...Wow lol. Nice one Winter. It was fun while it lasted right?

NaerdY · 5 時間前

Hey Winter, here's a viewbot for you ( ° ͜ʖ͡°)╭∩╮

esoterikk · 10 時間前

Fucking finally some proof to dunk on this little shit

PGP- · 6 時間前

He's done pretty well for himself based on his false viewership/popularity.. Didn't he get invited to homestory to cast because of his popularity? Also didn't he do something with redbull because of it? Not to mention getting sponsored by nvidia. Paying for those bots really opened up some doors for him that could have been open to other people who deserved it. Winter is a complete social degenerate and a liar. I hope he has built up enough bad karma so that a large portion of his natural life will be full of pain and suffering.

Yeilms · 3 時間前

Did someone mail this to nvidia's sponsoring mail or whatever they have for it? if not i will. We should all do so

fullmetalbawie · 14 時間前

i love how everyone is acting like this is a new thing. We've all known this for a damn long time.

dIoIIoIb · 12 時間前

some people would call this a witch hunt, i say this guy alone would put the entire spanish inquisition out of work, pretty damn impressive

Brolympia · 12 時間前

Winter deserves to have his smurf stream banished to hitbox.

HiderDK · 7 時間前

In this post I want to assess whether Winters stream numbers makes sense compared to his social media popularity.

Winterstarcraft has previously (in a talkshow) compared himself to Nightblue (a popular LOL streamer). According to Winter the difference in viewernumbers between him and NB is a result of LOL being more popular than Sc2.

Since they both are very talkaktive and rose to popularity at the same time, Winter felt they comparison made sense.

But if they really are comparable, then the ratio of twitter followers to twitch viewers should be similar....

Comparing Twitch numbers to Twitter followers

Winther = 5.1k twitter followers (2.6k tweets): average Twitch viewers = 3.2K

--> Ratio of twitter followers to viewer numbers = 1.6

Nightblue = 78.3k twitter followers (1.8k tweets). 15.6k average viwers

--> Ratio of twitter followers to viewer numbers = 5

So when we take the size difference into account, Winterstarcraft should actually have about (5/1.6*5.1k) 16K twitter followers, but he has LESS THAN 3 TIMES THAT!!! Moreover, he is even more active on Twitter than NB is.

And Nightblue isn't the outlier here. I looked through several twitter- and viewer numbers for non-pro popular streamers, and it's clear that Winters social media numbers is much lower than what you expect given his Twitch numbers. For god sake, even Livibee has more Twitter followers!!!

Why it doesn't make sense that Winterstarcraft should be popular

As someone who recently got into the LOL scene, it actually makes sense for me why NB is popular (and I don't think anyone questions this). Winters stream on the other hand differs from NB in a lot of ways;

(a) NB actually talks while playing against top ranked players (he was challenger, not masters as Winter was when he rose to popularity).

(b) From my perspective, NB seems to be a great learning tool on how to learn jungle (at least I couldn't find other training tools elsewhere). On the other hand, there are much better tools for learning Starcraft.

(c) NB is actually talked about on Reddit for other stuff than botviewing. But everytime Winter is mentioned, it's mostly a result of him being accused of botviewing. If he really was this super interesting streamer, wouldn't he be more popular on Reddit as well? Wouldn't there be more videos of him doing "interesting" stuff (as we have seen with Dragon, Destiny and Avilo previously?)

(d) Winters growth rate was very suspicious. He had around 400-700 viewers in early 2014 over multiple months (source: my memory). Then suddenly he just grew to 2-3K.

One could argue that this growth rate could be explained by him being featured on TL, but no other streamer has experienced a similar growth rate after being featured.

As a comparison, Avilo's growth rate was much slower (I believe he was at around 400-500 viewers when he got featured, and increased to 700-800 a couple of months after he got featured... while receiving alot of attention on Reddit).

TLDR;

Even if we didn't have this hard evidence presented by Nick here, there were so many ways which Winter's viewer numbers simply didn't make sense. Based on rough comparsions to a couple of other streamers, I would estimate that Winter probably trippled his viewer numbers through viewerbotting. That would give him viewer numbers of roughly 1-1.2K. However, it's worth mentioning that his actual viewer numbers benefited from viewerbots so had he not botted in the first place, it's likely that he would be around 500-800.

Another possiblity is ofc that his initial 400-700 viewer numbers were already being inflated by viewer bots, and in that case he shouldn't have had any type of viewers at all.

Sources: http://www.goldper10.com/article/809-league-of-legends-streamer-stats-january-2015.html

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/475208-top-100-streamers-of-2014-top-50-of-december

Ur1nd4ng3r · 14 時間前

I'm literally speechless, that Winter use viewbots is always known, at least from who has a minumun of brain.

Winter excuse is, "I don't use viewbots, somebody bought and runs them on my channel".

Obviosly this is a lie, but it's his excuse.

DARKSTARPOWNYOUALL · 13 時間前

I would like to compose an email to NVIDIA about the person they are supporting, the mentality and negative impact his content has on the game, and the underhanded manner in which he has gotten their sponsorship.

Does anyone know exactly who or where I should send this email to, to ensure the best chance of someone who matters reading it, and not just some tech support/email answered being like "meh, whatever, not product related"

LuciddSC2 · 14 時間前

B A S E D

A

S

E

D

WarreNsc2 · 14 時間前

Summoning /u/detectivedickbutt to verify.

lolpan · 13 時間前

Is there by any chance you can calculate all the page likes from bots on Winter's Facebook page? I would like to see if that has some correlation with this statistic.

bizzyqu · 13 時間前

time to see what's on sale at /r/pitchforkemporium

sOsCS · 12 時間前

Awesome, great work! I tried to do some similar research on a smaller scale a while back, but wasn't able to find any concrete proof.

BigOilGames · 11 時間前

The thing I am most surprised about with all this how well the bots are done. The names are somewhat generic, but not any more than most other online forms. They went to the effort to put profile pictures up that, while also generic, are pretty varied as well. Honestly the ones that chat too are not much different from what I see on other streams. Whoever has done this knows what they are doing. (besides all following the same few people, that seems a bit sloppy)

sponge_bob_ · 6 時間前

time for a beating https://gfycat.com/DirtyGleamingEwe

Ormusn2o · 3 時間前

Wait so does this mean winter is still eligible best streamer of 2014 award? He might as well votebot it as well.

stavor · 14 時間前

finally winter will get banned Kappa

rtc7788 · 11 時間前

This was only a matter of time. It was so fuckin obvious. He can turn on his stream and within a few minutes, get 2.5k viewers. While people like Jaedong streaming at the same time would only get like 1.5k-2k after streaming for an hour. Yet Jaedongs chat would be like 50x more active.

SinasterSc2 · 10 時間前

I don't care if winter view bots to promote himself I don't care if winter view bots to promote his stupid fake dog loopy what I do care about is the fact that he portrayed himself as an sc2 advocate while view botting especially when Nvidia stepped up and brought him on as the only sc2 player (?) I don't give two fucks about winters self image but I do care about the way this reflects on the community. If he cares at all he should be ashamed.

goodCat2 · 14 時間前

grabs popcorn*

megablasterman · 14 時間前

Surprise surprise

Avarence · 14 時間前

it was pretty obvious lmao

Thoughtsofathinker · 13 時間前

can you confirm if HTOMario also viewbots?

MaccabeeWarrior · 12 時間前

Looks like Winter gets to hang out on Elba with Napoleon and u/unidan

Feraly · 11 時間前

As one of the most popular SC2 streamers in terms of viewers, it will be interesting to see how well he does in the Starcraft II streamer awards Kappa

niiirsc · 7 時間前

Thank you, dear NickHotS for proving that this motherfucker is just fuckin crook. But still his "FANS" (idiots from NA) will tell that he is not viewbotting, even after fact that when he was streaming on hitbox he got 100 viewers XD

fuckin disgrace, die in hell

Ureth_RA · 14 時間前

well we all knew this was the case.

Terakahn · 4 時間前

Maybe instead of spending money on viewbots you should take that money and hire a PR team. Looks like you'll need it.

Starsmustshoot · 23 分前

Why would you put so much effort into this? Please give reasons as to me, it just comes across as a witch hunt

aiurlives · 22 分前

Hey how about doing something useful with your life.

Arabian_Goggles_ · 14 時間前

LOL get fucked winter!

MirGHeaT · 14 時間前

Wait, this isnt /u/DetectiveDickButt :O

ifitin · 4 時間前

Everybody fucking knows this already. The dude is fucking horrible and starts his stream with 2k + viewers while players who actually have made them self in this game struggle to get 1k in a given stream. Cmon people think about it

desquibnt · 3 時間前

Why does it matter?

cumbucketzz · 14 時間前

if someone you liked to watch was viewbotting would you stop watching them just cause of that, does it bother you? that said winter is #1 fuckboi and i really dont like him

ChosenBrad1322 · 10 時間前

Can we please finally remove this guy from the scene? Everyone knew 100% his viewer numbers were fake. If that wasn't enough to banish him, all he ever does on his stream is bash on silver players using smurf accounts. Seriously, who would watch that anyway... It had to be viewbotted.

IfTheseTreesCouldTal · 13 時間前

Detective L has another identity, his name is NickHots lol.

callmeblew · 13 時間前

OP Are.. Are you.. DetectiveDickbutt? amazing write up and research. A job well done sir, it's about time the people learned the truth!

theblaah · 13 時間前

what will happen now to his stream? will he get banned from twitch?

Color	Meaning
	Discussions & Selfposts
	Videos & Stream
	News & Events
	Spoilers
	User Created
	Fluff & Offbeat

	Starts	Ends
Upcoming
Ongoing
Proleague 2015	22 Dec	10 Oct
SC2ITL Season 4	Jan 23
2015 WCS Season 1	14 Jan	5 Apr
Fragbite Masters Season 4	8 Mar	12 Apr
2015 GSL Season 1	7 Jan	22 Mar
StarCraft II StarLeague S1	17 Dec	21 Mar
IEM World Championship	12 Mar	15 Mar
Completed
TeSL 2014-2015 Season 2	12 Dec	8 Feb
IEM Season IX - Taipei	28 Jan	1 Feb
GPL 2014 Season 2	8 Oct	25 Jan
SOC 2013-2014 Gd Finals	11 Dec	24 Jan
2014 G-League	23 Sep	28 Dec
Kung Fu Cup #1	23 Nov	21 Dec

starcraft

調停者