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How could they legally prosecute them? What laws were broken?

EULAs are legally-binding in the United States, and the Federal government is very happy to murder people under CFAA violations.

> EULAs are legally-binding in the United States

Not generally. Specific ones may be, but so far it's always been on a case-by-case basis.

Seeing as this is something personal to me, while Twitch originally used the CFAA, when seeking judgement they dismissed that claim (page 2 footnote 2): https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.299961...

Thanks for linking that.

IANAL, but at least on the /2007scape streams the viewbots were used to pump up numbers on fake streams linking to phishing sites (which presumably is an illegal activity in most countries).

For other content, it can be seen as a loss of income for the streamer if they are demonetized due to viewbots, and for those where it isn't - it is effectively ad fraud since Twitch revenue is based on those engagement numbers

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