Earlier this week, Ironmouse, a Vtuber who briefly held the record for most Twitch subscriptions of all time, shocked the streaming world by announcing her exit from VShojo, a major North American Vtuber agency that rose to prominence alongside her. The reason? She felt she’d been “misled” and that she was “owed a significant amount of funds,” including a whopping $500,000 meant for the Immune Deficiency Foundation, for which she’d raised money during the 2024 marathon that broke Twitch’s subscriber record. Now, one mass exodus later, she’s raised more than double that amount.
Like other agencies, VShojo is meant to provide Vtubers with resources to aid in marketing, opportunities, creation of virtual avatars, and things of the like. VShojo is notable for a couple reasons: 1) It was the first major North American agency in a scene previously dominated by Japanese organizations, and 2) It bills itself as “talent-first,” and unlike many in the space, grants creators under its umbrella IP rights to their Vtuber character (others keep the character if a creator quits or gets fired). Fans were shocked, then, to hear claims that VShojo, the good guy in a sea of supposed swindlers, was leaving its biggest names high and dry.
"I don’t think people outside Vtubing understand how crazy this is," an extraterrestrial-themed Vtuber who goes by the handle Serotina wrote on Twitter. "VShojo had one of the best reputations of the big corps. The talents always spoke SO highly of VShojo, and many indies aspired to join them, like that was the dream. It’s so unbelievable how hard they fumbled."
Ironmouse had extra motivation to depart the agency with which she’d become semi-synonymous: She suffers from a chronic illness called common variable immune deficiency, or CVID, which leaves her highly susceptible to infection. The money she’s made from streaming has allowed her access to better healthcare, but she remains largely homebound. Helping others in similar situations by raising money for the Immune Deficiency Foundation – which provided her aid when she was “lonely,” “terrified,” and “confused” during the darkest doldrums of her own health decline – is her main cause.
“The Immune Deficiency Foundation means the world to me. [Streamer friend Connor "CDawgVA" Colquhoun] and I have both spent a ton of energy, time, and resources raising money for charity, and we're both so proud to say that we've raised nearly $4 million for charity,” Ironmouse said in a video explaining why she left VShojo. “The thing that hurts me the most is that the Immune Deficiency Foundation, which is the most important charity to me and also the reason why I’m here today, is owed over half a million dollars from VShojo. … I really want to tell you everything, but unfortunately right now I have been instructed by my attorney to wait for more of the legal procedure to unfold. So one day I will be able to tell you the full story. But for now, I just need to let you know that I will no longer be a part of VShojo.”
Aftermath reached out to VShojo and the Immune Deficiency Foundation for more details, but did not receive a response as of this publishing.
Ironmouse’s announcement triggered a cascade of departures; as The Verge notes, 12 of the 13 Vtubers listed on VShojo’s website have cut ties with the agency in the three days since she posted her video. Others, like fellow massively popular Vtuber Kson, also claimed that VShojo owed her a “significant” amount of money.
Before long, freelance artists who’d helped contribute to VShojo projects came out of the woodwork to say that the agency ghosted them and failed to pay them on time – or, in some cases, at all.
"Nowhere near what Mouse is going through, but for the past [around a] year VShojo has been habitually late in paying me for commissions, sometimes leaving thousands of dollars of my invoices unpaid for months at a time,” a Vtuber composer who goes by the handle StarlightDaryl wrote on Twitter, noting that they did eventually receive what they were owed, but only thanks to the efforts of creators and their managers. “I tried to be patient, but knowing they were stealing charity money from Mousey while this was all happening makes me SICK to my stomach."
Ironmouse said on Twitter that she planned to ensure that all other artists who’d been left waiting would be similarly compensated.
Vortoxy, who provides freelance video production services in the Vtuber space, broke down their experience with VShojo.
"Once the project had been completed they asked me to fill out an invoice, and we agreed that payment would be sent 30 business days later,” Vortoxy told Aftermath. “In my case, I think my payment was sent about 53 or 54 business days later. Once the 30 days had passed, I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask the status of my payment, and often I was met with a message along the lines of ‘let me check with finances’ and then crickets for some time. I think I had asked about three times before I had finally received payment from them. I don't think I've had the worst case by any means, but it seemed a little ridiculous to me that I had to hunt down a payment of $500 from a company of their status."
Vortoxy added, however, that this wasn’t the first time they’d had to chase down a payment from an agency revealed to be in the throes of money-related woes.
"Oddly enough, it's been almost a year to the date when MSM Talent was also exposed for owing their Vtuber talents money,” Vortoxy said. “Similar to VShojo, they were an agency who provided backend support to various big indie creators in the space. I worked with them for just shy of a year and never received a single payment for the various projects I did for them until the very end, when a large group of creators were demanding the money they were owed."
Ultimately, they believe that VShojo is not exactly an outlier in this regard.
"I honestly do think there is a larger industry issue plaguing the scene,” Vortoxy said. “I have various other freelance creative friends in this space who also have told me their own horror stories of working with different Vtuber corporations or large creators; it's not uncommon. But ultimately I want to emphasize that there's still a lot of good people in this space. I've worked with dozens of Vtubers, both indie and corporate, as well as various companies in this space, and a large majority of the time payment is delivered on time."
Ironmouse, by most accounts, has done her best to make things right. In addition to saying she will help artists get paid, she’s also hosting a Tiltify fundraiser for the Immune Deficiency Foundation, with funds going directly to the organization rather than through an intermediary like VShojo. In just a day, her community raised over $500,000 to cover what VShojo owed. The total now sits at nearly $1.2 million.
"I don't really have words that can properly express how I feel," Ironmouse wrote on Twitter. "I feel like saying thank you to everyone is not enough. But thank you all so much for your kindness. My heart is so full it feels like it's going to explode. You all are truly amazing. I'm gonna go cry now."
With so many Vtubers leaving, VShojo’s future is unclear. But given the reputation of Vtuber agencies large and small for exerting control and, increasingly, failing to provide sufficient benefits in return, some, like heavy metal elf and news commentary Vtuber Elara, believe VShojo’s fall could herald a sea change. Indie Vtubers, she believes, are the future.
“There is a myriad of reasons some Vtubers choose to go corporate,” she told Aftermath. “However the landscape has evolved quite a bit, and I believe we will see the decline of corporate Vtubing as a whole.”
Update 7/24/25: VShojo has shut down.
"VShojo has failed, and I've mismanaged the company into the situation you're all witnessing," CEO Justin "Gunrun" Ignacio said in a statement posted to Twitter. "So today I am sharing the difficult news that VShojo is shutting down, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us to this point."
Ignacio said that VShojo raised $11 million to pursue "pursue a bold, talent-first approach in VTubing, prioritizing creators and community over short-term profits, to achieve long-term sustainability," but that ultimately, "we ran out of money."
He also seemingly took responsibility for misspending the money Ironmouse raised during her 2024 marathon stream.
"I acknowledge that some of the money spent by the company was raised in connection with talent activity, which I later learned was intended for a charitable initiative," Ignacio wrote. "At the time, we were working hard to raise additional investment capital to cover our costs, and I firmly believed, based on the information available to us, that we would be able to do so and cover all expenses. We were unsuccessful in our fundraising efforts. I made the decision to pursue funding, and I own its consequences."
"I am deeply sorry to all the talents, staff, friends, and community members who believed in our brand," he concluded. "You did not deserve this."
