FextraLife under fire by streamers for “stealing views”

Several streamers accused FextraLife of using bots on Reddit to downvote posts and unethically boost its channel’s Twitch viewership.

If you regularly browse Twitch channels when a new game comes out, you are probably familiar with FextraLife. Alongside a website mostly known for its RPG game guides and other news articles, the company hosts a community streaming channel on Twitch.

With over 1.6 million followers, FextraLife is one of the most popular Twitch channels. However, in 2021, Ludwig called out the company for “stealing views.” While talking about New World, Ludwig claimed there was something fishy about the channel having almost 60k viewers but not many people talking in chat.

Ludwig used the ‘/chatters’ command on the communities channel to reveal that only half of the view count was active in chat. It turned out that FextraLife used a controversial strategy to get more viewers, and Baldurs Gate 3 brought that practice back into the spotlight.

FextraLife called out for “shady practices” on Reddit and Twitch

A Reddit post claims that FextraLife will likely be blacklisted from the Baldurs Gate 3 community discussion page for keeping its posts as the most popular by using bots to downvote any competition.

Moistcr1tikal called out the FextraLife owner for claiming not to know what Reddit bots are in their response to the allegations.

“It’s totally fine to defend yourself against the accusations and point out logical inconsistencies, but why tell a bald-faced lie like that in your defense?”

FextraLife is also under fire for embedding its stream on its wiki website. When someone is reading an article, they also count as a viewer because the stream is live in a small corner at the top of the page.

Using a Quin69 clip as evidence, Moistcr1tikal showed there were 23,000 viewers on FextraLife when the channel was offline.

And the YouTuber doesn’t have faith in Twitch resolving the issue. “This only helps Twitch. These big numbers are fantastic for them. Twitch has no incentive to shut that down.”

Even though Twitch benefits from large viewership numbers, Moistcr1tikal argued: “This isn’t good for other streamers. It takes those spots away from streamers who deserve it more and who actually do have communities.”

Other community members share a similar sentiment. Asmongold acknowledged the issue and responded: “They (FextraLife) take up a directory slot from somebody who should be there. But they (Twitch) don’t care because they are making money from it.”

Twitch streamer Gothalion called out the practice and claimed: “I’ve had so many broadcasters reach out and say they quit streaming the game because seeing embedders in the top slots killed their drive.”

So, although FextraLife is not violating any Twitch guidelines, streamers demand more support for content creators who don’t engage in embedding practices.