TwitchCon Assault Throws a Harsh Spotlight on The Streaming Company
- Top streamer Emiru was assaulted by a male fan during TwitchCon 2025, with event security failing to respond.
- Twitch’s follow-up statement was widely criticized as tone-deaf and misleading.
- Creators like Asmongold and MoistCr1TiKaL have highlighted Twitch’s ongoing safety failures and poor management.
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A Failure of Event Staff
TwitchCon, the annual event organised by the live-streaming site, celebrated its 10th year at San Diego Convention Center between Oct. 17 – 19, 2025. However, early concerns regarding event safety proved substantiated when popular streamer Emiru was assaulted by a male fan during a meet-and-greet, with event security failing to act.
Other safety concerns have also been shared in the days since, primarily through videos on social media, shining a light on lax organisation, security checks, and Twitch’s failure to act accordingly during the event. Even so, Twitch offered a rebuttal to complaints through a statement that others quickly pointed out as being tone-deaf.
“The safety and security of all those attending TwitchCon is our highest priority,” the Twitch statement begins. “In line with existing TwitchCon security protocols, law enforcement and event security were on site and responded to the incident. We immediately blocked this individual from returning to the TwitchCon premises, and they are banned indefinitely from Twitch, both online and in-person events.”
“Twitch has zero tolerance for harassment or acts that inhibit the safety and security of our community.”
Emiru’s Story
The incident was caught live during a Twitch stream by BaconCrumbz, who was documenting various aspects of the event. Following the assault – which saw a tall, stocky male cut the line for her meet-and-greet to grab her and attempt to kiss her – Emiru took to her Twitch channel shortly afterwards to talk about the experience.
“I don’t think Twitch would have put out an official statement if that clip wasn’t posted and going viral,” she said. “And even after that clip was posted and going viral, as far as I know, the other people who had meet-and-greets today were not reached out to and asked if they wanted extra security, or even if they wanted to cancel their meet-and-greet.”
Emiru also clarified that she could see Twitch security but they were nowhere near her, nor did they approach after the incident – her personal manager and friend were there to ensure she was okay. It was also her own privately-hired bodyguard who can be seen in the video intervening. In a separate, later, video, Emiru explained that she had a preferred bodyguard that she hadn’t been allowed to bring with her, as he’d been banned by Twitch after he stopped someone stalking her at a TwitchCon two years prior.
BaconCrumbz shared a shorter version of the clip on X, which is the one that’s been doing the rounds, and commented on the situation in a follow-up post:
“I think everyone is in agreement on the severity of these issues and I believe we now have the evidence we need to demand changes for content creators and ensure something like this never happens again.”
Emiru, real name Emily Shunk, is a 27-year-old, US-based content creator who started her live-streaming career by sharing footage of League of Legends gameplay, before gradually branching out into other games and industries.
She joined the professional esports company Cloud9 in 2020, and then became a co-owner of content creation organisation One True King in 2022. To date, she’s the founder and main host of the pop-culture podcast Steak & Eggs, and is typically rated as the most-watched woman streamer on Twitch (at the time of writing, she had an average number of 20,000 viewers, with peak numbers edging close to 45,000).
She also noted that, despite her popularity and clout, she was still very lucky to have had the incident filmed as she wouldn’t have known how to otherwise convince people it happened.
“For all we know this could have happened before, to a small streamer, and someone just wasn’t filming it.”
Twitch is Rotten
As the footage of the Emiru incident shows her own security stepping in, not Twitch staff, and there are videos of the perpetrator walking about normally afterwards, hundreds of comments have called-out Twitch’s statement for being disingenuous, especially regarding its apparent stance on not tolerating harassment: “idk man, looked like you tolerated it pretty well,” said noted YouTuber The Act Man.
Asmongold also weighed in with “I look forward to discussing the veracity of this statement tomorrow,” which he followed up in videos on his YouTube channel. “In the past year or so, Twitch has become a worse and worse version of itself,” he said. “It’s rotten at the top. It’s rotten in the middle. And it’s rotten at the bottom.”
The issues Asmongold, and other streamers such as penguinz0/MoistCr1TiKaL (Charles White), have highlighted include Twitch implementing more adverts, allowing viewbots to artificially inflate streaming statistics, paywalling a rewind function, and giving platform space to questionable content.
This latter point is especially concerning, as it includes a recent front page showcase for Tygre, who streamed objectively weird videos related to baby furries and underwear, and controversial political commentator Hasan Piker, who recently came under fire for using a shock collar on his dog during a livestream.
White noted a common fear expressed by others that the man who assaulted Emiru could have had a weapon. He also highlighted previous concerns and incidents related to TwitchCon itself in the past, including reports of spiked drinks and a lack of safety, and that Twitch always claims to beef up security every year and yet never does. Twitch even posted on Oct. 8 that it was ramping up security at TwitchCon 2025.
However, other reports and footage (often from other content creators) from this year’s event revealed entry staff allowing people in despite their ticket bracelets not registering on the system, and a stall selling knives at an event with a zero weapons policy.
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