SLAY Awards: "Streamer Oscars"
In December 2025, the Irina Viner Palace in Luzhniki hosted the third SLAY (Stream Legends Awards of the Year) ceremony – the main event in the world of Russian-speaking streaming. The organizers called the event the "Streamer's Oscar", set a viewing record of 750,000 viewers, and for the first time held the ceremony with a live audience. However, immediately after the finale, a serious scandal erupted: top streamers publicly accused the organizers of bot stuffing and behind-the-scenes dealings. So what is SLAY really – long-awaited industry recognition or a party "for insiders by insiders"? We delve into this in this article.
What is SLAY: from the first ceremony to records
SLAY (Stream Legends Awards of the Year) is an annual award for Russian-speaking streamers, organized and hosted by Vyacheslav "Buster" Leontiev – one of the most popular and wealthy streamers in the Russian segment of the internet. The first ceremony took place in 2023 and, by the standards of that time, became a notable event. However, the real breakthrough came in 2024: the award broadcast gathered more than 370,000 peak viewers, breaking the record for non-esports streams on Russian-speaking Twitch.
2025 marked a new level for SLAY. The ceremony took place on December 3rd in the prestigious "Irina Viner Palace" in "Luzhniki" – for the first time with a live audience, tickets for which cost from 5,000 rubles. The show program, red carpet, statuettes from jeweler Mozi J, and masks from artist Pokras Lampas – all of this was meant to emphasize the status of "the main award of the year."
And most importantly – the numbers. The organizers stated that the peak online viewership of the broadcast reached 751,000 viewers. For comparison: the American The Streamer Awards 2025, where iShowSpeed (a global star with an audience of tens of millions) won in the "Streamer of the Year" nomination, gathered 187-221 thousand peak viewers. The Russian award, according to these data, outperformed the American one by 3-4 times. Impressive? Absolutely. Raised questions? You bet.
"Streamer's Oscar": ambitions and reality
The comparison to the "Oscar" is not an understatement by the organizers. SLAY truly tries to replicate the Hollywood model: nominations, voting, red carpet, statuettes. But there are important differences.
Award Structure
The award includes about 16 nominations, of which roughly half are chosen by the viewers themselves. In 2025, over 90,000 suggested options were submitted for voting. Key nominations: SLAY KING and SLAY QUEEN (main awards for the best male and female streamer of the year), "Best CS-streamer", "Best Dota-streamer", "Best Minecraft-streamer", "Best Multigaming-streamer", "Best IRL-streamer", "Breakthrough of the Year", "Project of the Year on Twitch". And also "people's" nominations: "Meme Person of the Year", "Audience of the Year", "Style of the Year", "Charisma of the Year", "Couple of the Year", "Drop of the Year" (moment of the year), "Track of the Year".
2025 Winners
The main triumphant of the evening was Gleb "Sasavot" Orlov, who took home three statuettes: SLAY King, "Charisma of the Year," and "Best Multigaming-Streamer." The "Queen" was Natalia "GENSYXA" Berdnikova (who also received "Style of the Year").
Full list of winners by nomination:
In the "SLAY King (Streamer of the Year)" nomination, Gleb "Sasavot" Orlov won.
In the "SLAY Queen (Female Streamer of the Year)" nomination, Natalia "GENSYXA" Berdnikova won.
In the "Best CS-Streamer" nomination, Ivan "StRoGo" Shurpatov won.
In the "Best Dota-Streamer" nomination, Rostislav "rostislav_999" Protasenya won.
In the "Best Minecraft-Streamer" nomination, Kirill "5opka" Baranov won.
In the "Best Multigaming-Streamer" nomination, Gleb "Sasavot" Orlov won.
In the "Best IRL-Streamer" nomination, Anar "anarabdullaev" Abdullaev won.
In the "Breakthrough of the Year" nomination, Anar "anarabdullaev" Abdullaev won.
In the "Project of the Year on Twitch" nomination, Evelone Duo Cup won.
In the "Audience of the Year" nomination, Kirill "5opka" Baranov won.
In the "Meme Person of the Year" nomination, Ivan Zolo won.
In the "Couple of the Year" nomination, Alexey Koreshzy and Anna Kosstochka won.
In the "Track of the Year" nomination, the composition "XXL" by 5opka and MellSher won.
In the "Style of the Year" nomination, Natalia "GENSYXA" Berdnikova won.
In the "Charisma of the Year" nomination, Gleb "Sasavot" Orlov won.
Voting System: 70/30
Starting from 2025, the organizers changed the system for determining winners: 70% of votes from viewers and 30% from a professional jury. This measure, as intended, was supposed to balance the results in case of a "sudden influx of external audience" and take into account the opinion of real industry representatives. The irony is that this very system would later become one of the main targets of criticism.
Scandal: "700-800 thousand bots were stuffed"
If the figures of 751,000 viewers seem too good to be true, perhaps they are. Immediately after the ceremony, several top streamers made harsh accusations against the organizers.
Maddyson's version: buying out all bots on the Russian internet
The loudest statement came from streamer Ilya "Maddyson" Davydov. In a parallel broadcast, launched simultaneously with SLAY, he made a sensational statement: the award massively used bots to inflate viewer online numbers.
According to Maddyson, even before the start of the ceremony, he contacted a bot-stuffing specialist with a request to increase the online viewership of his own stream. But he was refused: "I would have had a million viewers on my stream today too, but, as you understood, I realized it too late," he stated. His contact explained: the total pool of available bots in the Russian-speaking segment of Twitch is about a million. And a few days before the awards, almost all major bot-stuffing services reported full occupancy for December 3rd.
"The thing is, the total pool of bots in the Russian segment is a million. That is, all the bots that can be bought in Russia are a million, no more. That's why they said that today at SLAY, they had 750 thousand, and 250 remained," Maddyson stated.
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