How OTK Lost Its Way

When OTK – short for One True King – was founded in 2020, it was far from the first streamer conglomerate/production company/lifestyle brand to plant its flag, but what it had going for it was its unique mix of personalities. Where the likes of 100 Thieves and FaZe Clan began with feet firmly in the esports world, and others like the once-Pokimane-fronted OfflineTV prided themselves on cozy wholesomeness, OTK was the result of Twitch’s edgelord past meeting its brand-friendly present. Having Zack “Asmongold” Hoyt, Matthew “Mizkif” Rinaudo, Tim "Esfand" Esfandiari, and Rich Campbell on the starting bench as owners lent the organization an authentically messy appeal. Flash forward five years, though, and OTK is facing an uncertain future. Streamers were its greatest asset, but they’ve also proven to be its biggest stumbling block.

At the tail end of last year, OTK laid off employees working in production, sales, and marketing, reducing full-time headcount from around twenty to around five, according to former OTK employees, whom Aftermath granted anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly on these matters. This was the culmination of an arc that began promisingly, with ambitious ideas from streamers, behind-the-scenes staff, and Tips Out (the organization’s fifth co-founder and main strategic mind), but which ultimately descended into public-facing scandals and conflicting priorities on the part of some of the aforementioned streamers, who also co-owned the organization. 

"It’s really about accountability, right?” a former OTK employee told Aftermath. “When you have creators that are owners in the organization, you can't tell them anything. You can't do anything.”

Aftermath reached out to OTK multiple times in the weeks before this report’s publishing. The company declined to comment on most of what follows. An OTK spokesperson told Aftermath: “OTK's vision and business model remains the same as it has for the past several years: to be the best influencer-led gaming brand in digital. We continue pursuing this endeavor each and every day.”

The Power Of Friendship

OTK’s earliest days were characterized by a palpable sense of fun. In a 2020 video introducing the collective to fans, Hoyt outlined his vision: "We came up with this idea of making an org and building an org around our friends – and building the org around friendship in general." Streams and videos suggested that he and his fellow mostly-World of Warcraft streamers had, indeed, figured out how to monetize their friendship. There was a shenanigans-laden Friendsgiving, a Pokémon card-powered charity drive, a (purposefully) budget pro wrestling show, and eventually, a content house. Over time, additional members like Nick “Nmplol” Polom, Chance “Sodapoppin” Morris, Emily "Emiru" Schunk, Emily "ExtraEmily" Zhang, and Will Neff joined as well, though not all in ownership capacities.

The vibe of OTK’s initial events was often loose and low-stakes. Streamers drank and laughed. Living spaces were cluttered. Camera angles were awkward. Overlays were minimal. OTK’s streamers made it feel like they were messing around and somebody just so happened to leave a camera in the room.  

But OTK was still very much a business, one founded by creators who’d spent their careers regularly behaving in ways that were not brand-friendly, but which was intended to cause brands to see dollar signs and feel an overwhelming urge to slap their logos on the organization’s content.

"You had Nick, Mizkif, and Asmon collaborate on stream, and you had, like, 57,000 people watching,” one former OTK employee told Aftermath. “You're like 'This is a goldmine to monetize.’ Any brand would be absolutely over the moon to have those kinds of numbers. And obviously it was during the covid age of Twitch, where we saw the big [viewership] boom. So it was a match made in heaven. … [OTK] wanted to make events and monetize these streams where they can put all their brands together, and it can yield insane budgets – getting clearance for six, almost seven-figure budgets for shows or episodes or stuff like that."

Over time, this meant that OTK had to professionalize. Brands didn’t necessarily want to attach their names to messy rooms and wanton weirdness. They wanted to be part of a polished product. 

"When you scale up to these businesses, when you're asking them for more money, they're pitching it in front of their CEO, CMO, VP of marketing, etc,” the former OTK employee said. “The way [OTK's content] looked back then, it just didn't look appealing. [Brands aren’t] going to commit money to this when you're competing against TV, traditional media buying, and all that stuff [where] everything's well polished."

So, in some cases, OTK upped its production values. It leaned on consistent formats like Schooled, in which star-studded streamer lineups competed to answer questions based on knowledge they should have acquired in school, and sold brands not just on mid-episode placements but season-long sponsorships, social media clips, ad reads, newsletter mentions, and more. Big-name brands like Coinbase, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Razer, Intel, and eventually Progressive latched onto the nascent venture. 

Then 2022 saw two major scandals rock the org: In September of that year, Rinaudo was accused of covering up a sexual assault incident between two other streamers, and OTK suspended him pending the results of a third-party investigation. In a statement in December, OTK wrote that the investigation “did not find direct evidence that Mizkif attempted to minimize or cover up sexual assault as alleged.” The statement also noted that Rinaudo had publicly demonstrated a "callous disregard towards the severity of sexual misconduct and racial prejudice in our space" and would remain off OTK’s board of directors until "he demonstrates to the board that he is capable of upholding our organization's values.” Aftermath reached out to Rinaudo to ask whether or not he’d been reinstated but did not receive a response as of this publishing. 

In December 2022, Campbell, another founder, resigned from OTK following sexual assault allegations. He more or less disappeared off the internet until 2024, at which point news broke that he’d filed a defamation suit against one of his accusers for $3.6 million in damages after she sued him. Aftermath reached out to Campbell’s lawyer for more details about the current status of the case but did not receive a reply.

Smaller controversies also took place in 2022, like Hoyt getting suspended from Twitch for what the platform called "hateful and unmoderated conduct" in his Diablo Immortal chat. Even the sorts of events that felt tailormade to attract sponsors – for example, the annual OTK Expo, which began in 2022 as an attempt at a more scripted-and-staged, prim-and-proper video game showcase – ultimately suffered as a result of scandals, according to ex-OTK staff.

"We cared deeply about indie games, indie developers, and the people in the industry,” a former OTK employee told Aftermath of the OTK Expo. “[But] there's a lot of sponsors that just straight up didn't want to work with us after the Mizkif stuff, after Asmongold's first incident."   

"[Allegations are] an absolutely soul-crushing thing for any sales person or marketing person trying to pitch a brand,” another former OTK employee told Aftermath. “The first thing any brand safety person from any of these big Fortune 500 brands sees when they type out OTK is sexual assault. Pitching that would be putting themselves in the crossfire of 'Why are you even here at this job if you're not flagging this early on?' So slowly, it became very difficult for OTK to sell itself [to brands]. … And the more you're spending with a brand, the more money you're asking, the more due diligence happens with a brand."

In 2022, the organization also began to expand. With Tips Out, who’d previously founded and run a World of Warcraft esports company called Classic Dueler’s League, leading the charge, the minds behind OTK started a sister company: Starforge Systems, which specialized in gaming PCs. Two more followed shortly after in 2023: Mad Mushroom, an indie game publisher that, on paper, synergized nicely with the OTK Expo, and Mythic Talent, a creator management company that now counts among its roster stars like Case “Caseoh” Baker, as well as OTK mainstays like Hoyt, Rinaudo, and Morris. Starforge and Mythic went on to become successful businesses in their own rights.

"[OTK’s issues] make it really hard to build a sustainable business, which I think is why OTK has diversified so many times into a PC company, talent management company, and a video game publisher,” a former OTK employee told Aftermath. “It was like 'Hey, we can use OTK as this tip of the spear, a marketing campaign into the parts of the industry that are typically really low margin, and if we don't spend anything on marketing, that can actually increase our margin.’"

The official OTK spokesperson took a similar, albeit sunnier view of the company’s strategy: “In many ways, OTK is the nucleus that supercharges all of our other entities. Through our content, brand, and corporate support, OTK helps establish new businesses in a fraction of the time it would normally take.”

There’s No “I” In Stream

As time went on, another difficulty arose: Streamers began to lose interest. Former OTK employees characterized this as less of an individual issue, like the controversies, and more of a systemic problem. Livestreaming does not incentivize long-term planning and collaboration; rather, streamers are taught by the never-ending Groundhog Day loop of viewer numbers, subscriptions, and donations to hyperfixate on the here and now. Which trends should you chase to keep your channel’s numbers up? How should you capitalize on a big moment? What’s going to benefit you more: slowly and meticulously contributing to a team effort or betting on yourself? 

"Initially, the creators thought [OTK] was fun, like 'Oh, I'll do a show here, do a show there.' And then suddenly it's like 'We need you to do a show every other week.' That creator's not happy,” said an ex-OTK employee. “So it was painful! Sometimes we would have a show, expected deliverables with talent, and [a creator’s] excuse was 'I don't want to show up. I have sponsored stuff [on my own channel].' And what quickly happened was, creators realized they could just say no, and there was no accountability."

Since many of OTK’s creators also co-owned the company, they couldn’t be fired or meaningfully reprimanded for no-showing OTK programming. This, according to ex-employees, was exacerbated by the fact that while creators who did not partially own OTK were paid a salary, OTK did not directly compensate creator-owners for OTK projects but instead offered them a mix of brand deals, equity in the company, cuts of sponsorships, ad revenue, and services provided by staff (graphics for a show, help starting up a new podcast, marketing assistance, etc). 

"They had all these utilities and all these resources,” said an ex-OTK employee. “Oh, you want to start a podcast? Perfect. We'll do it all for you. We'll only take a portion of the ad revenue [and/or] sponsorship revenue from any of the deals we've signed. So there were a lot of freemium benefits for all the creators at OTK."

As a result, ex-employees say, streamers continued to use these perks to benefit their personal brands after their excitement for the organization cooled.

"So what happened, especially this past year [2024], is creators realized that they were raking in money on their own individual deals: game deals, smaller brand activations, shows,” said the ex-OTK employee. “Absolutely enormous amounts of money. 'Why should I care [about OTK] when OTK doesn't compensate me for any of those things?’ [was basically how they approached it].”

Another ex-OTK employee pointed to Polom as an example of this phenomenon. Outside of a project that was considered his baby – Wild West, a large-scale IRL stream that saw 14 streamers role-play as cowboys on a real ranch – he increasingly focused on his own channel over time. To an extent, the ex-employee understood where Polom was coming from.

"[Polom] focused more on his own stream because it blew up, and he's not interested in working in advertised events for OTK, because that's more or less what it was becoming,” said the ex-employee. “People were calling OTK 'AdTK,' because every single event we were doing was sponsored by some game, some show, some whatever."

Aftermath reached out to Polom for more details, but did not receive a response as of this publishing.

But former employees say streamers weren’t exactly turning up their noses at ads either.

"They complained about us having so many advertised and sponsored shows, yet these creators could easily self-fund a lot of these shows and not have sponsors on them, but they chose not to,” said an ex-OTK employee. “These creators had the option for their shows to be white label, sponsor free, no ads – to give their community what they want. And they chose not to. ... They didn't have to lose any money to put on the show. [The creators] were making money from sponsors and then not following their own sponsorship deliverables."

The problem, as one ex-OTK employee sees it, is that streamers didn’t understand what they had.

"We'd say 'Hey, [group of creators], we're giving you all a $10,000 opportunity to play a game. We were able to work it out with a publisher,’” said a former OTK employee. “What did they do after we held their hand through the entire process? … [OTK staff] didn't get a thank you. Didn't get anything. It became another routine thing. It's very weird how this evolution of rhetoric within the company from the creators became 'I'm not being compensated. I'm not benefiting' even though they had a ton of shares, equity in the company, and they're getting brand deals out the wazoo."

Events that aired on streamers’ personal channels – rather than central OTK channels – stood to benefit streamers even more. 

"OTK never took any ad revenue from any of Mizkif’s streams when all these big events were running,” said the former OTK employee. “We never took sub percentages. We never took donations. So these creators were given a full big spotlight that drew massive amounts of attention and awareness to them for free, and we never took anything other than a percentage of the brand deals that came through."

What OTK did take, former staff say, went where you’d expect it to: paychecks and production.

"You have to make a margin, you have to pay people a livable wage,” said the former employee. “Give it to OTK: We were well compensated compared to most gaming production companies/media companies out there. I'll give it to Tips and the team for doing that."

“Production cost was mostly where cost and spend went,” the former employee added. “Salaries played their role, but production costs were crazy at times.”

Staff felt frustrated when they would bring a project fully to term, only for creators to drop the ball at the eleventh hour.

"We would have a merch drop,” said a former OTK employee. “We would go through a very tough refinement period of getting feedback, making sure the creators are really happy with it, and we're like 'Alright, it's time to launch. This is your merch. This is everything you guys wanted. You designed it.' And it was like pulling teeth to get them to promote it. This is their stuff! But they don't want to make a post about their merchandise."

"Year three, it was very obvious that creators were checked out,” said another ex-OTK employee. “It was a nightmare to get any deliverables done, to get them to post, to promote the shows. You probably saw it all the time: People are like 'Oh, I didn't even hear about this show. The creators didn't even talk about it blah, blah, blah.' Somebody else would have to go onto their accounts and pin things in the chat, promote or push from their accounts, push from their Reddit, post on their social media channels."

To an extent, this makes sense: As I’ve written a whole book about, streaming is a more taxing job than people give it credit for. Those at the top of the food chain are constantly juggling daily streams, YouTube channels, TikToks, Instagrams, collaborations, travel, and more. They regularly burn out. It’s not surprising that some decided to shake a burdensome weight off their shoulders when they saw an opportunity.

"I think a lot of people just want what's simpler, what they know and what is going to [put them on the path of least resistance]. It’s a very natural instinct we all have,” said an ex-OTK employee. “[Creators’] core product, their core business, which is their own streams, they're all crushing it. … A lot was great working with these creators and having them invested in the day-to-day business stuff, but the lack of communication skills, organization structure stuff for these creators was absolutely a fucking mess sometimes." 

Another pointed out that not all creators treated OTK events the same way. Some participated more than others. "ExtraEmily was super active. Cyr was great," the ex-staffer said, referencing two OTK creators who are not owners.

The Asmongold Problem

Then late 2024 arrived, and Hoyt, who’d begun consistently banging the anti-DEI drum to his millions of viewers the year prior, made his radicalization impossible to ignore by going on a racist rant against Palestinians in October, calling them “inferior” and adding that “I’m not going to cry a fucking river when people who have genocide that’s baked into their laws are getting genocided.” The entire Twitch community was taken aback, and even Tips Out published a statement breaking with his fellow co-owner’s “dehumanizing” stance. Twitch suspended Hoyt, and he apologized for his statements shortly after. At the time, he also stepped away from leadership duties at OTK, Starforge, and Mad Mushroom. 

However, in the months that followed, the overall tenure of Hoyt’s broadcasts did not change. After Trump got reelected in November, Hoyt leaned further into far-right politics. Some remaining sponsors opted to abandon ship.

"Asmongold's comments on the Middle East were kinda the nail in the coffin for [for those of us who got laid off],” said an ex-OTK employee. “It was a really tricky situation because, yes, Asmongold is entitled to his opinion, beliefs, whatever he thinks, but when you are the owner, founder of a company that you publicly own, and there's people that work at it, it impacts what you say. You're no longer the only one at it."

"Why would you want to be part of an indie game show when Asmongold just spouts about DEI all the time? It's very contradictory,” said another ex-OTK employee, referencing the OTK Expo. “It just sucks that Asmongold became so radicalized, because he [was] the owner of the company. ... Even if you do believe all this stuff, which is completely fine, you have some sort of responsibility as a creator to not be so radical. I mean, you guys are toying with my job, you know?"

In the months that followed, OTK associates like Schunk faced backlash for associating with Hoyt, while big streamers like Cinna suggested that Schunk and others should cut ties with him.

In November 2024, another divisive creator who’d joined OTK in 2021, Tectone, resigned following sexual abuse allegations. When layoffs hit the company in December, employees say they hadn’t been explicitly warned they were coming, but given the year OTK had endured, some felt it was only a matter of time.

“The writing was on the wall,” said one ex-OTK employee.

"The money just kind of dried up, and to protect the other subsidiaries, people had to get let go,” said another, who added that they remain proud of what the organization was able to accomplish, despite all the difficulties. “I think we put on some of the best shows ever on Twitch: Wild West, Melee II and III. We put on an MMA show that was unlike anything we've ever seen before [on Twitch]." 

At this point, OTK’s future is uncertain. Hoyt said during a February 2025 broadcast that he is no longer involved with OTK “at all, pretty much.” He went on to explain that his “extreme” and “polarizing” political content played a major role – and that it did, indeed, make it “harder to find sponsors.” 

"I also don't want to put anybody else at risk by doing that,” he said during the stream. “So that's why I separated myself and I didn't want to have anything to do with that. This is a mutual thing, right? And, even if it wasn't, I still would agree with them."

But by that point, a measurable amount of damage had already been done: People had already lost their jobs. 

Following the departures of Hoyt, Campbell, and others, OTK’s lineup of owners now looks quite different than it did when it started, with Esfandiari, Rinaudo, Tips Out, Polom, Morris, and Schunk listed as owners, while others, like variety streamers Cyr and Will Neff, are simply content creators under the organization. (Hoyt declined to comment on whether or not he’s still a stakeholder in the organization.) Now OTK is rebuilding. The company is set to host another OTK Expo in May. It might end up looking similar to those of previous years, as it will be filmed in the same studio. But behind the scenes, the latest iteration is leaning on contractors – a few of whom used to be OTK employees – instead of a full production team. It’s unclear how many sponsors the show will be able to attract.

The most notable motion out of OTK this year has been the establishment of yet another spinoff, a marketing company called Cross Realm Inc. Cross Realm has already brokered a deal with gambling-powered Twitch rival Kick to fast-track streamers through the platform’s application process. "At the end of the day, Kick has the cash, and OTK needs it," said an ex-OTK employee. 

Bigger changes are coming, both in front of and behind the camera.

“Just know that we’re trying to make changes to make [OTK] a better org, and you’ll probably hear more about that in the future, the immediate future," Neff, who joined OTK in 2024, said during a February stream. "And if we can’t make it a better place, if we can’t make it a happier, healthier place, then I’ll have to reevaluate where I stand.” 

During a March stream, Rinaudo downplayed both his role in what remains of OTK and OTK as a whole. 

“We don’t do anything,” he said in response to a viewer question about whether he’d stick around following Hoyt’s departure. “Why would I leave? For what? Another org? There’s no point. I think OTK is just more so a group of content creators nowadays, more so than it is anything else. It’s not really an org.”

This fits with the changing economics of livestreamed events. Where once organizations like OTK, as well as Ludwig Ahgren’s Offbrand, signaled the rise of a Twitch meta built around glitzy productions, reality – known primarily for its harshness and pretty much nothing else – had other plans. Offbrand Productions launched in 2022 to help other creators roll out the sorts of ambitious, almost television-like bonanzas that helped Ahgren’s star ascend, but it shut down in December 2024. “Our people worked hard and made amazing content, but we failed to make the events business sustainable," Offbrand wrote at the time. Former OTK employees couldn’t help but feel sympathy pangs. 

“You even saw Offbrand, they tried to give it an entire go, and they ran into the same things,” said one ex-OTK employee. “I know the exact same feeling that they felt. A lot of brands got smarter, too. They realized 'Cool, you guys are pulling in a lot of viewers, but it's just not the same.' The conversion isn't there for a lot of brands." 

Skyrocketing viewership numbers, brands have come to realize, look nice, but in the world of livestreaming, bigger isn’t necessarily better.

“Does it really help that Asmongold is the one trying to market a cute, cozy indie game, or that Tectone is the one trying to sell a PC? Maybe it does for the first six months,” said a former OTK employee. “But beyond that, it's actually probably more harmful than it is helpful.”

Some ex-OTK employees think we’ve already caught a glimpse of the future. Events are thriving on Twitch, but in some ways, the new breed harkens back more to the low-budget-looking chaos of OTK’s early content than to the productions of the AdTK era. Kai Cenat, a streamer so popular that he’s crossed over into the mainstream, made his name on video game marathons that required little more than a few cameras and a room. Admittedly, as he’s grown, he’s leveled up his approach with high-budget commercials and a mind-bogglingly deep roster of celebrities, but others have applied a more modest version of his formula to impressive success. 

"I think creators will copy Kai Cenat and his subathon kind of structure, where they'll invest in a singular room setup,” said an ex-OTK employee. “Extravagant plans, things that are usually run by a group, they'll outsource it. Even something like Shroud's Fragathon, we'll see those, and they'll be around. I think we'll just see a lot less of 'Every quarter, a new game show, etc.’ … I think OTK will transform to a similar capacity that [Cenat's] AMP is and FaZe Clan is and Offline TV is. It's a name for a group rather than a company." 

"There is a huge production team and a huge production budget behind a lot of Kai Cenat's subathons and events,” said another ex-OTK employee. “They're just tucked away in a different room, doing cams, doing [operations]. But I think the audience has shifted away from shows. When you're watching Kai in his bedroom and he's doing a cool event, it's like you're hanging out with a friend. It's like you're there. … We didn't adapt to the audience. We just kept doing what we had been doing for the past four years, and the market changed, and we were behind it."

OTK, then, was a learning experience for all involved, in both personal and professional senses.

"I'm a very long-time viewer and member of these communities, so when I first got hired at OTK, it was somewhat of an honor for me to end up working for these guys,” said a former OTK employee. “I really thought it was going to be something different. It was bittersweet."