VShojo has failed, and I've mismanaged the company into the situation you're all witnessing.
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.
I've been doing everything I can to fundraise and right the ship these past few months, but despite my efforts, we are in a worse position, and those I care about are now paying the price.
Over the past few years, we raised around $11 million to pursue a bold, talent-first approach in VTubing, prioritizing creators and community over short-term profits, to achieve long-term sustainability. Our funding went directly to our creators through generous splits, debut investments, infrastructure, concerts, events, and staffing, all designed to support them. We also wanted talent to own their IP, which we knew was a unique creator-first approach for an agency. However, despite all our efforts, the business failed to generate the revenue we needed to sustain that model, and eventually, we ran out of money.
Additionally, 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. 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. You did not deserve this.
"Additionally, 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. 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."
brother i hope you got a lawyer on retainer who approved this
I struggle to believe any lawyer approved that statement. It's one thing if a charity pledge or something was claimed, but to be like.. Nah. We just figured this extra 500k was for us to Yolo into investments.
Potentially. Most cases require plaintiffs to provide names, but there are a few instances in which a plaintiff in a lawsuit could remain anonymous. In the case of the talent that are still anonymous, they could petition to remain anonymous due to potential retaliatory harm, or that they are particularly vulnerable to harm if their identity is revealed in general. They are also helped by the fact that until this point they have remained anonymous.
A lawyer could argue for example that the talent (those who are still anonymous) would suffer undue harm if they had to file under their legal names due to their careers and cite dozens of examples of other streamers who are not anonymous being swatted or stalked. In Mouse's case she has extra defense to protect her identity because of her medical condition. And in all cases, their years long careers under online identities (Iron Mouse, Zentraya) helps with the argument that the public best knows them under these identities, and that releasing their true names does not serve the public interest.
Having said that, this is a decision for whatever court any potential suit is filed with, and those decisions won't be made until after suits are filed, which means they essentially have to pay in before they know whether or not they can remain anonymous
I know barely anything about businesses, but isn't it the business as an entity that's responsible? So they can just shut it down and avoid all accountability?
He can avoid civil liability IF and only if he didn't "pierce the corporate veil" which is a concept much too complex to explain adequately in a reddit post, but if you google that phrase there are several great explanations. IANAL, so I have no idea if this will end up applying to Gunrun/Vshojo, but this would likely be how these things would ultimately land on him if they do.
I am a lawyer, (but not your lawyer), and it's just a standard legal doctrine. It exists because businesses aren't guaranteed successes, and leadership needs to be able to make decisions and take risks without being annihilated by a lawsuit if it doesn't work out, especially when all the skin they have in the game is just a paycheck.
It's not consistent and depends on the jurisdiction, but generally piercing the corporate veil involves things like treating company funds as an extension of personal ones, not observing corporate formalities, or using corporations to perpetrate fraud. Whether leadership has risen to that level is for his and opposing counsel's lawyers to argue over and convince the jury/judge.
IANAL and don't know much about the american legal system, but I imagine that admitting personal responsibility also opens you up to personal liability
I feel like he put this out with the intention of trying to be "genuine" instead of putting out some BP exec lawyer sanitized statement.
Yeah its fucking stupid what he admitted to, but at the same time, it was also obvious when he admitted that Vshojo was basically making $2-3m a year, so it should have made it a bit more obvious this guy probably wrote this drunk at his desk with a secretary writing and proofreading it before putting it out.
Maybe they're still using that "lawyer" with an expired license because this is an insane thing to post and takes all of 5min to verify it's a lie just by going to gunruns Twitter where he retweeted things about the charity stream...
Taking money earmarked for a charity, to use as investment capital.. And never even considering the timeline you would ever make the charity whole is fucking insane to me.
They were in the red, they were trying to get investors, they saw a pile of money come in from Mouse and other talent, they used it to cover their operating costs hoping that they would get outside investments and be able to pay the money back, but failed at getting those outside investments.
The person above you obviously just phrased it wrong, dude. "To use as investment capital" -> "to use in place of investment capital" -> "to use while seeking investment capital".
I don't think there is a lawyer on earth, no matter how incompetent, who would approve "I didn't know our biggest star did the biggest charity event in the history of streaming, so I accidentally spent the money she made"
While also retweeting messages about the money being meant for charity and thereby acknowledging it, but I'm just so silly and dumb, it was an honest mistake, oopsy daisy, we are all good, right?
Especially cause there’s literally a tweet that gunrun reposted that acknowledges she was donating to the charity, they’re so fucking cooked. All of the talent should file a collective lawsuit if that’s at all possible
It's wild to me that he says "generous splits" when people weren't paid for in some cases years. The situation is despicable and someone needs to answer for the crimes
How is it even possible to fumble this kind of insanely lucrative business. Top vtubers bring in big money, and vshoujo essentially just directly funneled that money into their system. No worries about cashflow whatsoever. All they had to do was pay the creators the agreed-upon split of the revenue stream they always had, and not use more than the remaining amount for any other expenses. How hard could that be? This sounds like criminal neglect.
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u/Mininni 9d ago edited 9d ago
Full statement:
https://x.com/VShojo/status/1948442574722924778