A YouTuber has made serious accusations against the most famous German Twitch channels for EA FC 25. The accusations focus on purchased clicks from India.
Which streamers are involved? The claims come from YouTuber Cem “HapticRush (Haptic)” Gülken. They are specifically directed at the channels of Simon “GamerBrother” Schildgen and “Tisi Schubech,” consisting of Timo Schulz and Simon Bechtold.
While Haptic has made a name for himself mainly with the first-person shooter Call of Duty (CoD), GamerBrother and Tisi Schubech have become known with EA Sports FC, formerly FIFA. In their segments, they rank among the most-watched content creators nationwide, and sometimes even internationally.
A dispute is now brewing between the parties.
What triggered the dispute? The dispute was triggered by a post from Haptic on X on August 30, 2024. Here, he accused the streamers of having purchased clicks from abroad:
In the same post, Haptic demanded that the accused streamers disclose their viewer numbers. Many users, especially from the accused’s camp, initially criticized Haptic harshly for these allegations.
The biggest streamers must repeatedly deal with criticism as part of public life. Even MontanaBlack had to justify his driving style:
Video intensifies allegations of purchased clicks
While the EA-FC streamers largely ignored the criticism at first, Haptic published a video on YouTube titled “Purchased Clicks on YouTube” on Sunday, September 8, in which he wanted to emphasize his allegations with evidence.
Why does Haptic make such allegations? In 2017, Haptic founded an agency called Ciberdime, aiming to ensure that content creators and their content are taken seriously. Haptic has identified the so-called viewbotting as a threat to this endeavor. And he accuses the accused streamers of this primarily for 2 videos on their main or secondary channels.
An example of such an unauthorized tool is the purchase of bot viewers from domestic or foreign sources. A bot is a software program that automatically repeats a task. Such bots can be purchased and then applied to videos or streams. They result in a higher number of viewers and can lead to a better algorithm for the streams or videos with artificially generated comments.
Haptic tries to show viewbotting in detail using an example of a vlog by GamerBrother on YouTube. At the time of the allegations, the video had generated around 150,000 views.
For the analysis, Haptic uses his insights from the dashboard of the specific YouTube video. This displays the number of viewers in relation to the elapsed time using a curve.
What evidence does Haptic provide? Haptic addresses several points in his video that he believes indicate that the videos were boosted through viewbotting.
You can watch the detailed presentation of the evidence in this video:
In summary, Haptic identifies the following indicators of viewbotting:
- the videos experienced a rapid increase in viewer numbers after a difficult start
- upon looking at the origin of the viewer counts, it is noticeable that over half of the clicks come from external sources, which according to Haptic is an extraordinarily high value
- 61.5 % of the clicks come from India, which would correspond to about 90,000 viewers from India with approximately 150,000 views
He then applied the same approach to TisiSchubech’s video, with similar results.
What does the accused side say? The first statement from the accused side came on Sunday, September 8. In a Twitch stream, GamerBrother addressed the allegations live for the first time.
GamerBrother considers Haptic to be the “most disgusting influencer,” has “never been so humanly disappointed,” and feels “mentally right.” (via TikTok)
By now, various major content creators have been confronted with this dispute. However, many are still holding back their opinions because the situation is too opaque. Not long ago, a feud shook the entire streaming landscape, and the end still seems not quite reached: How €2.50 plunged German Twitch into chaos and led to the career-ending of 2 influencers
