The Ugliest Streamer Breakups In History

We think of streamers as internet superstars, but really they're just like everyone else. They have messy personal lives just like the rest of us. Even though they live an outsized portion of their lives in front of the camera, when they finally get to go offline, they don't just go into hibernation. Your favorite streamers are looking for love and connection in their real lives, and plenty of them try to keep their personal relationships as far from their audiences as possible.

Just like so many people with regular day jobs, streamers tend to meet prospective partners at work. Whether they're living in the same content house or just hit it off at a Twitchcon afterparty, there's countless reasons why some of the biggest streamers in the business end up dating each other. When both people in a relationship spend their time performing for an audience, it's inevitable that fans are going to find out all the gory details about how a particular romantic entanglement unfolds.

breakups are never easy, but with thousands of people tuning in to find out what happens, things can get very messy, very quickly. There are countless examples of streamer relationships imploding spectacularly, and some of them come from streamers you never even knew were dating. The ugliest breakups in streamer history have torn apart friendships, divided audiences, and changed the course of entire careers.

Plenty of streamers prefer to keep their private lives genuinely private, but things don't always go according to plan. Adept and xQc are a prominent example of two streamers who never intended for their relationship to become a source of internet content. For a long time, the two of them pretended to be just roommates with no romantic connection whatsoever. That thin disguise fell apart when xQc kissed Adept on stream without realizing her camera was running. Not long after that slip-up, Adept confessed that they had never been "just" roommates.

xQc and Adept kept the rumor mill turning throughout their relationship, which was anything but smooth. The two broke up and got back together multiple times, and fans came up with all sorts of speculation based on the small glimpses into the relationship they got. Some suggested that xQc was abusive toward Adept, but she made a post on Twitter saying, "I will make it clear that didn't happen and anyone accusing him of that will be blocked/reported."

Adept may have defended xQc from those accusations, but the relationship between the two is still tense. Adept filed for divorce in 2022, claiming she and xQc were common-law married, and neither streamer was allowed to talk about the case. In June 2023, YouTuber HenryResilient revealed that he'd found a Protective Order filed by Adept against xQc. As of this writing, the former couple's legal battles are ongoing. 

Not long after his breakup with Adept, xQc had another brief but dramatic romantic entanglement with another streamer. Fans learned that xQc was dating Courtney "Nyyxxii" Shepherd when the pair appeared on his channel together and shared a kiss. Even though the relationship began so soon after xQc and Adept broke up, fans were happy to see their favorite streamer moving on. It wasn't meant to last, though.

xQc and @nyyxxii seem to make their relationship public on his Twitch stream with a kiss pic.twitter.com/UvHvSW3rNW

— Dexerto (@Dexerto) November 2, 2022

A little over two weeks later, xQc uploaded a video addressing some leaked DMs — as well as why he and Nyxxii were no longer together. He discussed some Discord messages from Nyxxii telling someone that Adept had called her from xQc's phone. According to Nyxxii, when she tried to reach out to xQc to find out what was going on, she realized that he'd blocked her on all of his social media accounts.

xQc essentially confirmed what Nyxxii had said in his video. He clarified that Adept had been upset and took his phone without asking to call Nyxxii. As for why xQc decided to call off his relationship with Nyxxii, his answer was pretty vague: "I had these very verified people telling some stories, right, about Courtney, right, that made me pretty much just not align with her as a whole."

Believe it or not, the tumultuous breakup between xQc and Adept also had an effect on another of xQc's later relationships. Fans first noticed that xQc and fellow streamer Fran were dating when they spotted the streamers together in a post on Fran's Instagram story in June 2023. In that same post, Fran said that she planned to close her Instagram account due to privacy issues, which led some fans to speculate that Adept had been reaching out to her.

Later, Fran confirmed that Adept had contacted her about xQc. On her Twitch stream, Fran said, "[Adept] was trying really f***ing hard to convince me that Felix was an abuser, when he is not." She said they had spoken for several hours in the car, and Fran said she got scared by the way that Adept was handling the situation.

While it must have put stress on their relationship, Adept's contact with Fran ultimately didn't have anything to do with why she and xQc broke up. "Felix and I broke up," she explained during a stream, "because he cheated on me." She later called xQc while still streaming on Twitch, and he confirmed what she had said about the end of their relationship.

breakups are hard for everyone, but most of us don't have thousands of fans keeping track of our every emotion. Navigating a change in relationship status while an audience is watching makes the entire process more difficult, and for some streamers, it's not just their audience that's invested in a relationship. Streamer couples sometimes build whole groups around their relationship, and that can quickly turn a normal breakup into a total disaster.

Sadly, Lily "LilyPichu" Ki and Albert "Sleightlymusical" Chang learned this the hard way. The couple dated for two years, and throughout their relationship, they were also technically coworkers. Both streamers were members of the content creation group OfflineTV, and the group's fans and members were heavily invested in their relationship.

In November 2019, a series of posts from Offline TV members led some fans to think that the couple had broken up, and LilyPichu eventually addressed the issue head-on in a Twitlonger post. She announced the breakup and apologized to fans for all the subtweeting before saying she planned to take a break from streaming. Sleightlymusical made his own post two days later. He admitted to cheating on LilyPichu and wrote, "I'm sorry for the people I've hurt in all of our communities, I'm sorry for the friends I let down at Offline.TV, and most of all I'm sorry for hurting you, Lily." Sleightlymusical left OfflineTV in 2020, and LilyPichu went on to release more music — and date another fellow streamer, Michael Reeves.

Streaming can be so up-close and personal that it can be easy for fans to over-invest in their favorite streamers. Because of this, many streamers do their best to keep their personal lives disconnected from their camera-facing careers. Not every streamer has the same concerns, though, and some are happy to let their fans in as much as possible. That was once the case with BaboAbe and Natsumiii, whose fans were thrilled when they started dating. BaboAbe and Natsumiii were totally willing to share the details of their relationship with fans. They went a step beyond most other streamers and even broadcast their wedding ceremony live on Twitch.

Fans were thrilled to get to take part in BaboAbe's and Natsumiii's big day, but that made it all the more shocking when the streamers broke up less than a year later. BaboAbe went to Twitter, to announce the breakup: "Things happened, and I can at the very least say with confidence that I've done all I can to try to save our marriage and make things work."

Hey guys, you know that I'm normally very kept to myself when it comes to personal matters, however I felt that we owed it to you all to give an update.

Wendy and I are no longer together.
Things happened, and I can at the very least say- with confidence that I've done all I…

— Abe (@BaboAbe) July 31, 2023

Though BaboAbe publicly addressed the issue in a calm fashion, fans picked up on hints that things are much uglier behind the scenes. Several members of OfflineTV — who were friends with the couple and attended their wedding in person — all unfollowed Natsumiii on social media after the breakup kicking off still-unconfirmed rumors that Natsumiii had cheated on BaboAbe.

Wendy cheated on Abe?
by
u/Reasonable-Pain-8982 in
otvandfriendsrumors

LegendaryLea and Sodapoppin's past relationship is ancient history by streaming standards. That said, ugly breakups can leave people with hurt feelings for a long time, and we've seen some proof that the wounds from this relationship haven't entirely healed.

By 2019, LegendaryLea and Sodapoppin had been broken up for quite a while, when one of Lea's viewers asked her in chat if the two of them had found a way to remain friends. This was a mistake. Lea didn't mince words, saying, "Nobody cares about Sodapoppin. That's like two or three years ago." She went on to tear into Sodapoppin and the viewer with a string of profanities. After addressing the question, she permanently banned the viewer from her chat and ended the stream early. 

Since then, both parties have moved on and dated other people, and Lea is happily raising a family now. Sometimes exes can be friends, but this is one situation where it's probably okay for each of them to pretend like the other doesn't exist.

Valkyrae and Sonii are another streamer couple who seem to have some unresolved feelings about their relationship. The two of them began dating in 2016 when both of their careers were still in their infancy. They stayed together as their audiences – especially Valkyrae's – grew, but then the breakup came in 2020.

For a while both streamers kept relatively quiet about the breakup, and when the issue did come up, Valkyrae went out of her way to defend Sonii. During a 2021 stream, she told her audience that she still loved Sonii and that she didn't want anyone attacking him or thinking about him in a negative way. She summed up their issues as "a lot of bad timing ... different paths [and] different priorities." After those mostly-positive comments, fans were a bit taken aback when, in a 2022 episode of the "100 Thieves Cast," Valkyrae talked about her past relationships struggling because her partners were jealous of her success.

Many fans assumed that Valkyrae's comments on the podcast were meant to be a subtle dig at Sonii, and they weren't the only ones making the jump. According to Dexerto, Sonii made his own comments about the relationship on his Twitch channel not long after the podcast episode aired. "I might have to just say my piece in response to kind of the bulls*** that I'm hearing," he said at the time. The clip is no longer available on Sonii's channel, but this just goes to show that sometimes people can hide their real feelings for a long time after a breakup.

Most people know Asmongold as a streamer and part-owner of the One True King content org, but for a brief window of time even non-OTK fans knew him as Pink Sparkles' boyfriend. Both of these two creators tend to keep their personal lives mostly to themselves, but they did announce their relationship to their fans in a 2018 livestream.

Pink Sparkles later moved into Asmongold's house in Austin, Texas, but things shortly took a turn. Fans first learned about the breakup from some now-deleted posts by Pink Sparkles, in which she explained (per Dexerto) that she struggled with depression in Austin. She ultimately decided that moving back to California and focusing on herself was the right thing to do.

What started as a seemingly ugly situation has become something that the streamers can now comfortably joke about. Asmongold and Pink Sparkles have remained friends after the breakup, and Asmongold's audience teased him relentlessly when they caught him watching PinkSparkles' stream in the summer of 2020. In April 2022 Asmongold joked about the breakup on stream, saying, "I thought that we would break up within a week of her living here, and it actually took a whole two months, and so I think things went pretty well."

Twitch might still be the best-known streaming platform online, but it doesn't have a monopoly on streamer drama or breakups. YouTube's been helping people get into the content game for well over a decade, so it's only natural that its biggest creators have some ugly breakup stories of their own.

Jake Paul is no stranger to internet drama, so it's probably not surprising to learn that he went through a messy breakup that made plenty of headlines online. The internet first learned that Paul was dating fellow YouTuber Alissa Violet in 2015, and she joined his Team 10 content group not long after. But then, in early 2016, Violet revealed on Snapchat that she and Paul had broken up and that he removed her from Team 10. In June 2017, Violet posted a YouTube video in which she explained the entire relationship from her perspective. "He would literally tell me he loved me one day, and then tell me he hates my f***ing guts the next day," she said.

In the years since, fans have learned even more messy details about the relationship. In the series "The Mind of Jake Paul," the couple both talked about Violet's brief flip with Jake's brother Logan, but they disagreed about the extent of the relationship and its impact on their own breakup. In December 2020, a couple of Instagram stories ignited rumors that the two were back together, but Violet soon told Keemstar that wasn't the case, saying, "I told him to f*** off."

Anthony Padilla and Kalel Cullen were another YouTuber couple that fans loved to see together. The two vlogged together and built up an audience over four years. Then, the couple announced in a surprise YouTube video that they were breaking up and moving on to do their own separate content creation. Each of them has continued to be active on YouTube, but even though their breakup at first seemed amicable, some ugliness has reared its head from time to time.

In October 2016, Padilla released a "Draw My Life" video, in which he talked about some of his most formative moments with his fans. In a clip that has since been edited out of the video, Padilla said, "When I was twenty-five I moved to Los Angeles. At the time I was in a manipulative relationship with someone that I now feel was using me."

It didn't require incredible detective skills to figure out that Padilla was most likely talking about Cullen. In some posts that have also since been deleted (via Superfame), Cullen addressed the video, saying, "You know DAMN WELL I wasn't using you. I'm ashamed that you would say that, knowing that your fans would come for me." It's unclear what prompted the sudden online spat years after the breakup, but the two eventually pulled their remarks offline and seemingly moved on.

Amouranth hasn't dated another streamer that we know of, but she has been through one of the most traumatic breakups in streamer history. During a shocking stream from October 2022, Amouranth revealed to fans she was in an abusive marriage. She admitted that her husband had controlled her content and finances for years, and fans got to witness how he spoke to her firsthand. As the stream continued, she talked with her husband over the phone, and he spent the entire call screaming at her. Amouranth later showed the stream some text messages from her husband in which he threatened to comandeer her social media accounts and all of her money.

For several days after the concerning stream, no one heard from Amouranth. When she finally popped back up online, she told all of her fans that she was free from her ex-husband. For the first time in her career, Amouranth is completely in control of her own schedule and the content she makes as well as where the money from that content gets to go. Fans have loved seeing Amouranth get herself into a better place, and she really seems to be thriving since the separation.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.