YouTube Gaming has been clawing its manner into streaming platform Twitch’s market share for months. However new information retrieved by WIRED means that YouTube Gaming additionally has a major problem with scammers and cheat-makers—and heaps and a number of bots.

In January, all seven of the most-watched YouTube Gaming channels weren’t run by joyful players livestreaming the sport du jour. They have been as a substitute recorded, autoplaying movies promoting videogame cheats and hacks, generally connected to sketchy, credential-vacuuming web sites, in response to one analytics agency. The pattern has continued into this month, with 5 of the highest seven most-watched YouTube Gaming channels final weekend promoting cheats.

Take one instance: As of this text’s writing, a video that includes a cracking teenage boy’s voice selling an unconvincing “cash glitch” in Grand Theft Auto 5 boasts 11,000 concurrent viewers.

“So mainly it’s about glitching Rockstar’s on-line servers and makes them ship out no matter amount of cash,” says the voice. The video encourages Grand Theft Auto 5 gamers to go to a web site referred to as “Good Glitches,” kind of their gamer tag and the quantity of in-game cash they need—as much as $9,999,999,999 a day—and hit “generate.” However, ho—the person should first show that they’re human by filling of their private data on two different web sites.

A chat field alongside the video shows annoyed messages: “I nonetheless haven’t acquired the cash,” or “I did all of the steps.” The stream, which frequently sits atop YouTube Gaming’s listing, remained reside final weekend for over 21 hours, throughout which it was seen over 1.1 million occasions. Right this moment, it has been reside for 9 hours.

The account behind the video, Queen PSH, has been lively since October 2016, and seems to have interaction in a standard type of scamming, says Zack Allen, director of menace intelligence at safety agency ZeroFox. After you fill in your private data—something out of your deal with to your bank card quantity—all these websites will typically flip round and promote it. Different occasions, websites that promise cheats or in-game cash will obtain malware onto your pc. Perusing the positioning Queen PSH hyperlinks to, Allen found that it’s linked to a community of 18 different web sites, together with different dishonest and porn websites.

“These networks do a very good job of redirecting and doing a sleight of hand,” says Allen.

Whereas a number of YouTube Gaming cheat channels have disappeared since January, a few long-time customers stay and many extra hold cropping up. One notably psychedelic channel encompasses a 3-D cat in a Russian hat promoting free in-game cash, towards a background of gaudy Russian textual content and a scrolling chat field. Sew from Lilo and Sew dances on the highest left nook. With 10,000 reside concurrent viewers as of this text’s writing, the video buoys the entire class for a considerably area of interest shooter sport referred to as Standoff 2.

It’s unlikely that the majority of these eyebrow-raising view numbers are actual people watching these items. As an alternative, scammers drive bot visitors to them to push the movies to the highest of YouTube Gaming directories, the place they’ll get probably the most publicity for the longest time frame–a greater place from which to dupe unfortunate viewers. “You may consider it as an underground platform economic system the place individuals should buy clout and direct visitors to those movies,” says Allen.

Though not one of the prime cheat channels’ house owners responded to WIRED’s requests for remark, their excessive variety of concurrent viewers—a median of about 11,600 from the weekend’s prime 5, in response to Stream Hatchet information—in comparison with their low frequency of reside chatters and new subscribers signifies the chance of bots. One video promoting a hack within the sport Escape From Tarkov has 11,615 reside movies as of this text’s writing, whereas only one,440 individuals subscribe to the channel. One other advertises cheats in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on cell with 9,360 reside viewers and only one,600 subscribers.