Small Twitch streamer claims she was “ignored” after xQc wins Hype Train award

German streamer Juliaaab has claimed Twitch gave their ‘Biggest Hype Train award’ to the wrong person, after Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel was named the victor in the Twitch Participation Awards. She claimed she achieved a hype train that was proportionally larger.

The Hype Train (or ‘Scam Train’, as it’s often jokingly called) is a form of streamer-audience interaction that was released back in January 2020. The crux of it is: streamers can set a threshold for a number of Bits and subs donated in a certain amount of time. When a threshold is reached, it starts a hype train.

The hype train works as a timer with five levels. Once the train starts on level one, viewers have a set period of time to fill the bar by donating subs and using Bits. Filling the bar will reset the timer and start the next level, allowing new emotes to be unlocked, until the train maxes out at level five.

It’s a pretty neat way of increasing interaction, and of course money. At the Twitch Participation Awards, xQc won the award for Biggest Hype Train, as his viewers reached over 2000% progression.

Streamer claims her Hype Train was bigger

German streamer Juliaaab, who streams variety to over 42k followers, claimed that “classic Twitch” had overlooked her own record. Juliaab claims she had a hype train of over 21,000% in November 2020.

“Classic Twitch,” she said. “I am disappointed but at the same time not surprised.

“Do not get me wrong. This is not about squeezing myself into first place with my elbows! I am sure that many other streamers have at least as strong a community and in the end the well-known names appear again without any breakdown.”

She tweeted a screenshot of her 2020 Twitch recap email, which shows the number “21,436.” She also contacted Twitch Partner Support for information on the data they used, but they could not provide it.

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Streamers can adjust the difficulty of their hype goal, depending on how hard they want to make the levels. There are five difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, Hard, Super Hard, and Insane. We do not know which level was used by Juliaaab.

This isn’t the first time Twitch has lately been accused of favoring larger streamers. On January 22 2021, 15-year-old streamer AverageHarry was denied partnership status and later banned after it emerged he was 12 when he made his channel.

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However, larger streamers such as BenjyFreshy and Tommyinnit, who were 10 and 11 years old respectively when they opened their account, have not been banned.

This isn’t the only controversy to emerge from the awards, with viewers roasting Twitch for giving a different award to a literal bot account.