Trainwreck claims he is the highest-paid streamer “by a long shot”
Twitch: TrainwreckTrainwreck claimed he was the highest-paid streamer in the world “by a long shot” following an exchange with a viewer who accused the Kick streamer and co-owner of viewbotting.
Trainwreck professed in 2022 to have made $360M from his first 16 months at Kick, a number which far exceeds other contracts offered to the platform’s $100M deal with xQc, or Adin Ross who claimed to have signed the “biggest streaming deal of any creator” when agreeing to join.
While we don’t often hear streamers talking specifics when it comes to their finances, Train didn’t look to play coy when the topic came up.
Trainwreck responds to viewbot accusation
After one viewer accused him of viewbotting, the streamer defended himself. He said: “Here’s the biggest stat of them all. You know how many people are viewbotting, we all do. So why am I somehow the highest-paid streamer in the world – by a long shot? Why the f**k would a viewbotting 14k viewer streamer be getting paid more than a 100k viewbotted viewer streamers?”
Train went on to explain that his fluctuating viewer number was reflective of natural viewership. He then cited that the speed of his chat when he interacted with it was much faster than similar streamers.
“Why don’t you figure out the fact that Kick was dead and as soon as I announced it on Twitter alone we had 1,000,000 sign-ups in 24 hours. Your favorite streamers couldn’t do that in one year on the platform. I did it with one tweet.
“I’m one of the titans of the industry, boy. People cheat to try and get to where I got naturally.”
Viewbotting is the act of artificially inflating viewer numbers for online content by creating fraudulent viewers using software. The practice is generally done for several interlinked reasons such as attracting more sponsorship, increasing streamer profile and even attracting more legitimate viewership by being at the top of ‘Most Watched’ pages on sites and categories.
Trainwreck, a partial owner of Kick, has been a vocal opponent of viewbotting. He has targeted rival site Twitch in the past claiming that “The number one botter is on Twitch.” Having called out viewbotters several times, Train pointed out the irony to his accuser, stating:
“You’re wasting your time on me when I’m the only streamer bringing up viewbotting on a daily basis and trying to fix the God-damn industry, while everyone ignores me.”
However, following confirmation that Kick streamer N3on was viewbotting, Trainwreck took to his stream to address Kick’s own problem with the issue in November 2024.
In that livestream, Trainwreck stated that developers at Kick had come across sophisticated viewbots, including bots that appear as distinct IPs from various countries, that would cost between $10,000-$20,000 per week to run. More complex viewbots can even engage in streamers’ chats, submitting software-generated messages.