Twitch wins $1.3m lawsuit against view bots

Twitch has won a key victory in its ongoing campaign against illegal bots.

The firm has been awarded over $1.37m after a California judge ruled in its favour, Kotaku reports. The case was agains the creators of a view bot that artificially inflates a Twitch channel's number of viewers and followers.

Court documents reveal Michael and Katherine Anjomi were deemed guilty of trademark infringement, breach of contract, unfair competition and violation of the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.

They were ordered to pay Twitch $55,000 in damages and a further $1,316,139 - the profits they made from sales of their illegal bot. The duo had been charging streamers up to $760 per month for fake viewers through sits like shoptwitch.com, twitchshop.com and twitchstreams.org.

Twitch has argued this makes it unfairly easy for streamers to earn money, not just from their content but from the streaming platform's Partner program, which opens up additional monetisation options and the chance to work with external brands.

The company revealed back in 2016 it had taken legal action against various view bots and their creators, with Kotaku noting that another court ruled in favour of Twitch last year against bot site twitchstarter.com. With two rulings under its belt, Twitch is likely to succeed in taking down the other bots it has targeted.

The company is also attempting to tackle the rise of spambots, which flood chat channels