Did you watch CS:GO on Twitch over the weekend? Then you might have noticed these streams from shroud and s1mple that looked quite different than usual.
What are these streams? Troll streams can occasionally be found on Twitch.TV. In the category of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, they stand out negatively by re-streaming videos from well-known players. The fake streams often promote mysterious giveaways that harm the participants. They hide behind big streamer names to make the giveaways appear “real”.
Especially when major tournaments are happening and there are already many viewers in the Twitch category for CS:GO, the fake streams try to take advantage of that attention. We reported on MeinMMO back in January 2020 about fraudulent CS:GO streams on Twitch.
Last weekend, the names of Michael “shroud” Grzesiek and Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev were exploited for this.
How the fake streams were running in CSGO – Tens of thousands of viewers?
So many were watching the fakes: On October 25, the “ESL One New York CIS Tournament” captured the attention of CS:GO fans. Thousands were watching.
As were the troll streams.
- At one point on Twitch, there were 22,100 viewers on a fake stream pretending to be s1mple (2nd place in the category)
- 17,500 on a fake stream pretending to be shroud (3rd place in the category)
- In 1st place at that time was the official Russian stream with 28,300 viewers
A large part of these are probably view-bots. They artificially inflate the viewer counts of the fake streams so that they rank high among streams with the most viewers.
This increases the chance that Twitch users will click on one of the fake live broadcasts and believe they are real due to the stolen video with the webcam shot of the streamer along with the name in the Twitch channel.
If this happens, the trap can spring shut. Anyone participating in a fake giveaway and dealing with strangers risks their Steam account and inventory. It is unclear how many “real” viewers watched the fake streams over the weekend and fell for the giveaways.
On Twitter, the Counter-Strike celebrity Anomaly said on October 25: “CS:GO is #3 on Twitch and literally 40% of the viewers are scam-bots. Nice!”
The two Twitch channels with the fake streams, s1mple6282 and shroudWRBE, have since been deleted. However, it is said that successors have appeared again who continue with this despicable method.
Have you also seen such fake streams on Twitch?
Things are currently going on in the professional scene of the shooter. 7 CS:GO professionals have been banned for betting on their own games. The ethics committee then intervened immediately.
