11 Times Fans Felt Betrayed By Their Favorite Streamers

Compared to other entertainers, streamers have a unique relationship with their fans. Streamers spend countless hours on camera, and they're often directly talking to their fans whenever they're playing games or hanging out with their friends live on Twitch. Fans really feel like they know their favorite streamers, which makes it all the more heartbreaking when those streamers mistreat their fans.

The streaming industry is full of secrets, and streamers can often tell big lies with almost no risk of facing any real-life consequences if they get caught. They can share hurtful opinions on a larger scale, knowing that at least some portion of the internet will still stand behind them. They can also set up genuine scams that take money right out of fans' pockets. Here are some of the biggest betrayals that fans have faced from some their favorite streamers.

Sliker had been building up a following on Twitch for years, but in the summer of 2022, fans and fellow streamers were shocked when Sliker made a big confession. In a since-deleted video (per Kotaku), Sliker broke down and admitted that he'd stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends and followers, all to fund his "Counter-Strike" gambling addiction. Sliker said that he'd pretended to be in desperate need of money when he approached multiple other streamers, including people like Pokimane and HasanAbi, to ask them for cash. "I deserve punishment," Sliker said. "Whatever happens, happens. I don't know what to say to the people I borrowed from ... this is the epitome of gambling. I want to say don't touch it."

Naturally, Sliker's fans felt completely betrayed, and his community's feelings didn't seem to change much when their money started coming back to them. Fellow streamers Ludwig and xQc worked to ensure that Sliker's fans were paid back, but some viewers thought they were letting Sliker off the hook by providing the money themselves. "So Sliker just makes it off with 300k and no repercussions sadly," commented one fan. 

Together, xQc and Ludwig paid back nearly $250,000 in just a month, and Sliker eventually faced some consequences. Twitch permanently banned Sliker from the platform in 2023, forcing him to move to Kick to continue streaming.

Ice Poseidon has always had a tense relationship with his viewers. The streamer has a history of being somewhat combative towards fans, which once lead some of them to dox him while he was on an airplane. That particular incident caused Ice to get banned from Twitch, and in that process, he lost almost his entire viewer base. Maybe that's part of why Ice Poseidon scammed his fans out of thousands of dollars.

When Coffeezilla released a video about Ice Poseidon in January 2022, everyone immediately knew that the story was going to be a rough one. Coffeezilla was already well-known for breaking the news of various crypto schemes, and he did it all over again with Ice Poseidon, who encouraged his fans to invest in a cryptocurrency called CXcoin. The investment push turned out to be a classic rug pull scheme, in which someone creates a cryptocoin and convinces people to buy it, massively inflating the coin's value. When they're ready, the creator then sells their majority share of the coin, pocketing the gains and completely devaluing the coin for all the other buyers.

When Coffeezilla confronted Ice Poseidon about having essentially fleeced $500,000 from his own fanbase, the streamer showed little remorse. "Yeah I could give the money back. It is within my power," Ice Poseidon said in the video. "But I'm going to look after myself and not do that." Ice still has viewers on Kick, but his viewership and reputation is never going to be the same as it was during his Twitch days.

Don't worry, you didn't miss a story about Mizkif defrauding his fans. That said, you may have missed a small move that Mizkif made in late 2024 which really rubbed some fans the wrong way. We're talking about Mizkif taking a DraftKings sponsorship.

It's important to get some context here. When big streamers like Sliker were being exposed for ripping off fans to feed their gambling addiction, some people started pushing for Twitch to ban gambling from the platform. Mizkif was one of the loudest voices opposing gambling on the platform, and he famously told his fans that he'd turned down several gambling sponsorships that could have netted him millions of dollars.

Because of Mizkif's outspoken opposition to gambling in the past, some fans were completely shocked to see him take a sponsorship from the sports betting company DraftKings. Other streamers like xQc and Los Pollos called Mizkif out for what they saw as total hypocrisy, and they definitely had some viewers in their corner. On the other hand, some have argued that DraftKings and sports betting are very different from the crypto gambling sites that Mizkif had originally spoken out against. The streaming world's relationship to gambling is extremely complicated, so it's no surprise that the reactions to this move were mixed.

At the height of the internet's NFT craze, NFT-based games were marketed as the future of the gaming industry, and Logan Paul wanted to be a part of that future. Paul launched a project called "CryptoZoo." Paul's project was supposed to be a game that allowed players to raise eggs into a variety of animal NFTs that they could collect and trade — and presumably sell for a profit. Eventually.

Coffeezilla released a lengthy video investigating "CryptoZoo" in December 2022, but to make a long story short, the game pulled in a ton of money from excited investors and early adopters, and then the project ground to a halt and never got properly finished. Investors lost thousands of dollars, but Paul maintains that he didn't intend to steal from his fans and claims that he was also misled by his business partners. "CryptoZoo" investors, however, didn't seem to buy that story. When Paul showed up in the company's Discord after Coffeezilla's video went live, the group's members were quick to lash out at Paul, saying out that millions of dollars had been taken in by the game, which had financially ruined some people who trusted Paul to come through.

Paul eventually changed course, dropping his lawsuit and apologizing to Coffeezilla. Not long afterward, Paul was hit with a class action lawsuit over "CryptoZoo." He released a statement in January 2024 that said, "'CryptoZoo' was derailed by bad actors," then laid out a process for people to get their money back from the game, putting up over $2 million of his own money. The buy-back program required people to waive their right to sue for additional damages, and it only covered people who made in-game purchases like eggs, not people who bought the crypto tokens associated with "CryptoZoo." 

Part of why fans love watching NickMercs is because the streamer isn't afraid to speak his mind. However, not everything he says is met with cheers and applause. On multiple occasions, NickMercs has left a portion of his viewers feeling completely betrayed. In June 2023, NickMercs shocked some fans by commenting on a video of LGBTQ protesters being attacked by writing, "They should leave little children alone. That's the real issue." When NickMercs doubled down and refused to apologize, Activision pulled his custom skin from the "Call of Duty" store.

That move lost NickMercs some fans and put others on edge, but NickMercs made some more comments in 2024 that really pushed away a portion of his fans. On his stream, NickMercs went on a tirade in which he claimed, "There's no such thing as trans people, that sh** [is] not even real." Some fans who were willing to overlook NickMercs' earlier comments drew the line here. On X, one fan who claimed to be a multi-year subscriber wrote, "Loved this man so much that my sub and follow alerts are him. How hard is it just to respect other people's choices and way of life?" NickMercs still has a massive following, but there are plenty of viewers who understandably feel permanently unwelcome in his channels.

The rise and fall of Dr Disrespect is a story that the streaming world will be talking about until the end of time. Guy "Dr Disrespect" Beahm grew to prominence as a hyper-competitive FPS player with a particularly brusque attitude. He was one of the biggest streamers on Twitch when he was suddenly and mysteriously banned from the platform in 2020. He moved over to YouTube and continued his streak of success, though fans never stopped speculating about the ban.

The truth came out in 2023, and many of Dr Disrespect's fans felt beyond let down by their favorite streamer. A former Twitch employee claimed that the Doc had been banned because he'd been talking with a minor via Twitch Whispers. On social media, Dr Disrespect admitted to exchanging inappropriate messages with a minor, though he made it clear that he hadn't done anything illegal. After Dr Disrespect made his confession, YouTube demonetized his channel and subscribers started fleeing by the tens of thousands. The Doc took a break from streaming, but he eventually deleted his confession post and came back online claiming that  the confession was fake and nothing had ever really happened. Dr Disrespect's YouTube channel has since been re-monetized and he's additionally started streaming on Rumble, but there are many former fans and fellow streamers who won't be following him.

After years of appearing behind a mask, "Minecraft" streamer Dream shocked the internet with one of the biggest face reveals in streamer history. It's not all been fun for Dream, though. He's been embroiled in a number of controversies in recent years, and plenty of the people who loved him in his early "Minecraft" days have drifted away. Dream is best known for his "Minecraft" content, but some also think he's a cheater. In December 2020, Dream was accused of cheating in a "Minecraft" speedrun, and he eventually admitted that he had accidentally left mods running during the run. A year later, the creator faced accusations that he'd faked what was supposed to be an unscripted "Minecraft" video, a claim he denied. 

Something even more serious came up in 2022: A former Dream fan claimed that he had groomed her when she was just 17 years old, and Dream denied everything. Dream brought the serious allegations up again in 2023 to re-litigate the perceived holes in the accuser's story and take people to task for not believing him. The video didn't sit right with many of Dream's fans, especially because the YouTuber had made light of the controversy earlier in the year, posting a TikTok in which he received a "Minecraft" shirt with the slogan "I love miners." 

It's not just longtime fans who've felt betrayed by Dream. He's also turned on some of his former friends in the "Minecraft" community. In particular, Dream and TommyInnit have had some embarrassing feuds on social media, and many fans tend to direct the blame at Dream for starting the fights.

Adin Ross has had a contentious relationship with his own viewers for quite a while. The streamer received negative attention in 2022 when he seemingly admitted to scamming his own fans while making a guest appearance on Kai Cenat's stream. During the stream, Ross was asked if he'd scammed his audience, to which he replied, "Yes, bro ... Oh, we all did." Just a year earlier, Ross promoted a cryptocoin that turned out to be a total bust for buyers, and many fans took this off-the-cuff comment from Ross as proof that he'd known the coin was worthless.

That comment didn't cost Ross his entire fan base, but things got worse in February 2024. Ross' own community leaked his personal address, showing that some of his viewers may still have an axe to grind. He responded by going on stream and saying, "The Twitter community is just a bunch of unhinged wild animals." Ross took a break from streaming in late 2024, deleting his social feeds and surprising fans in the process. As recently as January 2025, however, Ross has hinted that he may one day get back into the cryptocurrency game. Only time will tell how fans will take such a move. 

Jack Doherty is a massively successful content creator, but 2024 didn't exactly go his way. In October Doherty almost died in a car accident, but his fans struggled to have sympathy for him because Doherty was live on stream and texting when the crash happened. To make the situation worse, in the video of the incident that Doherty posted, the creator seemingly took very little responsibility for his actions. Even some of Doherty's youngest fans realized that what he was deeply in the wrong. "Listen dude I'm 17, I've gotten in a crash with a group of my friends," wrote one commenter on Doherty's crash video. "You aren't special, you are lucky, and you seem to be bragging about crashing. It seems like you need to be arrested or given a wake up call."

The car crash was bad enough, but Doherty's next big moves of the year really pushed some fans to their breaking point. Not long after the crash, Doherty asked for donations online and got slammed by commenters. In November, Doherty was accused of carrying out his own crypto rug pull scheme live on stream, and he was immediately called out by people all across the internet. Doherty still has a sizeable following — his YouTube account has over 15 million subscribers — but it does seem like he's taken a big hit from the recent scandals. The YouTube videos he released in the early months of 2025 all struggled to get more than 150,000 views, a fraction of the numbers pulled in just a year earlier.

PewDiePie is a beloved streamer and online content creator for good reasons, but with that said, even the best creators can make some serious mistakes. Back in 2017, PewDiePie left his fans shocked and disappointed when he used the N-word live on stream. PewDiePie was in the middle of a game when he said the word, and according to the BBC, he immediately followed it up by saying, "I don't mean that in a bad way."

PewDiePie obviously realized that he'd said something hurtful. At the time, Redditors discussing PewDiePie's reactions were torn between condemning him for blatant racism and offering him the benefit of the doubt as someone who grew up outside of the United States. Almost a decade later, people are still discussing what happened with PewDiePie on Reddit. Some still aren't willing to let him off the hook, but many fans have seemingly recovered from the hurt of his statement and argued that he's made up for his past actions.

If you don't remember the great cookie controversy of 2023, then you might be spending an appropriate amount of time away from the internet. Pokimane is one of the most popular streamers in the business, but that doesn't mean she's got a perfect track record with her fans. In 2023, Pokimane launched Midnight Mini Cookies, a health-conscious dessert made by Myna Snacks. Some fans started criticising her brand for selling a four-pack of cookies (i.e., a pack containing four bags of cookies) for $28.

The issue probably would have blown over pretty quickly if Pokimane had ignored the critics, but when responding to a commenter on stream, she said something that really didn't sit right with some of her fans: "It's four bags. That's seven dollars a bag," Pokimane said, adding, "I know, I know math is hard when you're an idiot, but like, if you're a broke boy just say so." 

It was that last statement that hurt some fans. "The moment individuals start calling people broke like an insult that's when I lose a significant amount of respect for them," wrote one Redditor responding to the controversy. Pokimane later apologized for her statement, which she said had been intended as a joke, on X. The comments on her apology post are full of angry statements, but eventually, like with pretty much every other piece of drama on the internet, people moved on.