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Valorant streamers are faking live broadcasts, and Twitch is stepping up to fight it

Valorant streamers are faking live broadcasts, and Twitch is stepping up to fight it

Twitch has updated its guidelines in order to combat streamers that are 'faking' livestreams in order to take advantage of Valorant drops. 

Riot's new shooter launched a closed beta at the start of April. Since then, it has racked up record-breaking streaming numbers, especially on Twitch. One huge incentive driving up the numbers is Twitch Drops - where select lucky viewers may receive a key to get into the beta themselves.

This is the only way that non-streamers can access the beta currently, so a lot of fans are consistently sitting in livestreams hoping to score a code. However, it's also led to some shady behaviour from streamers.

Creators have been caught broadcasting pre-recorded vods of them playing the game and labelling it as 'live', when they're not actually there playing it in real-time. Twitch has now prohibited the practise, and it could lead to punishments on channels that don't behave.

Drop it

The guidelines now list 'cheating a Twitch rewards system (such as the Drops or channel points systems)' as an offence, underneath 'spam, scams and other malicious content'.

Hopefully, the move will deter streamers from attempting to cheat the system and pass themselves off as live when they're not, and it may lead to a decrease in Valorant's streaming numbers from here on out. 

"We’ve heard concerns about creators continuously streaming VODs while tagging the channel as "Live" to farm Valorant Drops<" Twitch said in a tweet from the TwitchSupport account.

"This harms the integrity of our Drops Program so we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to clarify that cheating any Twitch rewards system is prohibited."


Editor

Danielle Partis is editor of PocketGamer.biz and former editor of InfluencerUpdate.biz. She was named Journalist of the Year at the MCV Women in Games Awards 2019, as well as in the MCV 30 under 30 2020. Prior to Steel Media, she wrote about music and games at Team Rock.