How VTuber Ironmouse and Her Peers Brought Down a Company While Raising $1.25 Million For Charity In the Process

By Elijah Gonzalez | July 25, 2025 | 11:14am

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How VTuber Ironmouse and Her Peers Brought Down a Company While Raising $1.25 Million For Charity In the Process

“This entire situation has broken me,” Ironmouse said in a video that went up on July 21, kicking off a chain reaction that would eventually spell the end of a VTubing agency that was considered to be one of the biggest in the growing space. “I just wanted to do something good and to give back to a community that helped me, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.”

Ironmouse is a Puerto Rican VTuber (streamers who use digital avatars) and is one of the most popular personalities on Twitch, having previously broken the site’s overall subscription record in 2024. Refered to by her fans as “Mousey” (or alternatively, “Satan”), she’s known for her classically trained singing voice, a chaotic personality that has her talking about musicals one moment and Metal Gear Rising Revengeance’s nanomachines the next, and her charity drives that have raised more than $5 million.

In the previously mentioned video, titled “Why I left VShojo,” her pastel pink avatar stands in contrast to a black background and somber tone. She accuses the VTuber talent agency VShojo, of which she was a founding member, of owing her “a significant amount of funds.” And more importantly, as she puts it, of withholding an over $500K donation she had made to the Immune Deficiency Foundation charity organization.

“I became a VTuber because I really wanted to make friends,” Ironmouse said in the video. “I was very lonely due to the fact that I have a primary immune deficiency disease called CVID. I basically have a low to non-functioning immune system, which means I get sick a lot, and it caused me to remain isolated for long periods of my life.

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“The Immune Deficiency Foundation is a charity that’s near and dear to my heart,” she further explained. “When my health first started getting really bad, the Immune Deficiency Foundation helped me immensely, when I really had nowhere else to turn. I was terrified, I was lonely, I was confused… And I never want anyone else to have to go through that.” Her words would prove a death blow for VShojo, a company that allegedly not only owed money to her and her peers, but also to an organization that helps more than a quarter of a million Americans dealing with immunodeficiency diseases.

“We are grateful to Ironmouse for being a fierce advocate for the primary immunodeficiency (PI) community and the Immune Deficiency Foundation,” the organization said in a statement to Endless Mode. “Our ongoing relationship with Ironmouse is both longstanding and transparent. Each time she’s hosted a fundraising activity, she has done so with care to ensure that contributions are handled responsibly. She has been steadfast in her genuine commitment to supporting our organization and our mission and what she shared about the Immune Deficiency Foundation in her video is accurate.” Later, Jorey Berry, the president and CEO of the group, further defended Ironmouse’s character in a statement on their YouTube page.

Within two days of Ironmouse putting out her statement, numerous VShojo talents revealed that they were also owed substantial amounts from the agency. Out of the 13 talents that VShojo represented before Ironmouse’s announcement, all of them had left the company within the next three days.

Then on July 24, VShojo’s CEO, Justin “Gunrun” Ignacio, posted that the company was going to be shutting down, effective immediately. “VShojo has failed, and I’ve mismanaged the company into the situation you’re all witnessing,” his statement posted on July 24 reads. “I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us to this point.” He goes on to allege that the business failed to generate the revenue it needed to sustain its business model.

As for where the $500K donation went, he doesn’t address it directly, only stating, “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.” Since then, many online have pointed out that Ignacio liked a Tweet where Ludwig, another content creator, praises Ironmouse for donating half of the funds raised from her recent subathon to charity. This is the money that VShojo was supposed to donate, and that Ignacio claims he later learned was for charity.

VShojo was founded on November 24, 2020, by Ignacio, a founding member of Twitch, alongside Phillip “MowtenDoo” Fortunat and Daniel “Apek” Sanders. It differed from many other VTuber agencies because it allowed its talents to maintain the rights to their characters, models, and assets even after leaving the group, letting them keep their identity even if their contract lapsed. Compared to other prominent organizations like Hololive or Nisanji, where the company owns all of these and creators need to start from scratch if they leave, it seemed like a good deal on the outside. The company’s tagline reads: “A talent first VTuber company.”

“Talent first, my ass,” former VShojo talent Kson said during a stream as she interviewed the CEO of the company’s Japanese branch, Koshi “loutlot” Makino. Kson would later explain that she was owed a substantial sum, “like a Ferrari amount of money,” and that she had been planning on leaving even before Ironmouse came forward. Responding to Ignacio’s statement, Kson wrote on Twitter, “Why didn’t you let us know the moment you realized this situation? Why did I get the information 2 weeks ago not from the company but from my home girls?? Why did you lie to the JP branch A WEEK AGO that everything was good and taken care of?????”

Other VShojo talent, such as Michi Mochievee and Zentreya, confirmed that they had been owed money for months. Even VTubers who hadn’t been officially announced as affiliated with VShojo revealed that they had been misled by the company, with streamers like Mint Fantome and PiaPiUFO indicating that they had signed with the group months ago, but that their debuts were repeatedly delayed, wasting their time and effort as they prepared behind the scenes. Somehow, it seems that the company continued to sign talent, even as it was allegedly so strapped for cash that it appropriated charity funds to keep the company afloat, a situation that either points to gross incompetence or something that can’t be explained by Hanlon’s Razor.

Unfortunately, several former VShojo members’ early accounts of what happened seem to indicate more wrongdoing than just fiscal mismanagement. In her video, Ironmouse describes how she was told she was needed for the company to succeed, and while that was somewhat affirming, she “felt guilt-tripped into signing. I felt responsible for everybody. I felt responsible for staff and talent alike. And I felt like if I didn’t stay, I was hurting everybody and destroying everybody’s life.” She recently commented on VTuber LordAethelstan’s stream about Ignacio that “the amount of lies I was fed while he looked me directly in the eyes. my trust and my heart is broken beyond repair.”

Several former VShojo talent who left the company in 2023, Nyatasha Nyanners, Silvervale, and Veibae, shared their accounts of the company as well. “back in 2023, vshojo tried to bully me into one of the most predatory contracts that i have ever seen. when i tried to ask more about it, their COO got extremely hostile with me and refused to answer any of my questions and so i had to hire a lawyer in order to get some clarification,” Vaeibae wrote in a post on Twitter. “in order for me to leave, they demanded i sign an nda that prevented me from speaking to any of the other talent about it. i could not say why i was leaving, i could not say what the terms that i was saying no to were. i even got in trouble for advising them to hire their own attorneys. they would watch my streams, read my discord, and then threaten to sue me. if i said anything that hinted towards how i really felt about the company, i was threatened with a lawsuit.” She describes how the company’s COO, Daniel “Apek” Sanders, used 4Chan to try and discredit her and Silvervale as “troublemakers.”

She goes on to list several more allegations: “their company lawyer has an expired law license. he literally does not practice law anymore, yet he was our point of contact for any legal help we needed. they actively pitted us against one another during my time there, and compared our success to others. they tried enforcing streaming schedules so that our viewcount would look better due to less overlap. MTD [VShojo co-founder Phillip “MowtenDoo” Fortunat] got reprimanded for being creepy to us. lol. got told not to message us privately. go figure.” Nyanners backed up Vaeibae’s claims, calling Fortunat a “creepy motherfucker.”

Silvervale’s account is similar, with her describing how she was singled out by management for using a lawyer to review her contracts, was owed tens of thousands when she left, that the company had an internal leaderboard to pit its talents against each other, and that it painted talent who left as greedy and destructive.

In a recent stream translated by the YouTube channel Oboretai Writing ch. (Disclaimer: we have not been able to independently verify the accuracy of this translation), Kson explains that while she initially thought that VShojo’s financial troubles were a result of mismanagement, she has come to believe “there’s malice there,” as the translation puts it. While she admits she doesn’t know what actually happened, she assumes that the company began to siphon funds to high-paid “employees” who were friends of the company’s owners. If we ever do learn the full extent of the situation, this likely won’t happen until legal proceedings commence.

Additionally, Kson describes in the stream how she thinks talent didn’t start communicating with each other about being stiffed on pay sooner because there is a general culture of secrecy around earnings in the industry due to the vastly different amounts that talents can make. She also explains how Ignacio’s status as a founding member of Twitch gave him credibility, and that it isn’t uncommon in the VTubing industry for some places to pay out slower, which is why it took so long for many to act.

While almost all of the talent at the company seems to have been struggling and eventually learned the full scope of the situation after talking to each other, as Zentreya said in a stream, the public allegations against the company “had to come from Mouse,” because the situation “absolutely affected her more than anybody.” When Ironmouse finally broke the news alongside several of her fellow talents, VShojo collapsed like a house of cards.

However, Ironmouse’s contributions wouldn’t stop with her video, because she also opened a charity campaign for the Immune Deficiency Foundation on Tiltify in response to the missing donations. She set a goal of $10,000. At the time of writing this on July 25, it has raised $1.25 million, well over double what VShojo allegedly failed to donate.

“I never expected this overwhelming support, so thank you guys so much,” she said in her latest livestream, before chat poked fun at her for undershooting expectations with her initial $10,000 goal. “Don’t give me that sassy look because I put $10K. Don’t give me the XD face, do not give that to me.

“I wanted to come on today because I just wanted to have a positive charity stream where we celebrate and we support the Immune Deficiency Organization… [looking at chat] Horse Girl? No, we’re not going to play Horse Girl today,” she says, referring to the left-field viral hit video game, Uma Musume Pretty Derby, before going off on a tangent.

“I was genuinely surprised to wake up today to see that we had hit over 1 million raised for the Immune Deficiency Organization. I don’t even know what to say. The amount of support is overwhelming, and I just want to say thank you guys so much for being so kind and supporting a cause that means so much to me. All the VTubers in the VTuber community have been so kind,” she says, referring to how the donation leaderboards are filled with her peers like Mint, dokibird, Nimi Nightmare, Shylily, and more who offered $10K plus donations. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such wonderful people in my life.”

Eventually, she gets to the main event: her singing. Before becoming a streamer, Ironmouse trained to eventually become an opera singer, a dream she had to give up when her health took a turn for the worse and she was diagnosed with CVID. However, that hasn’t stopped her from releasing multiple singles and covers over the years. “What should I sing?” she asks chat. A blur of song titles scroll past at lightning speed. “‘My Way’ [by Frank Sinatra]? I do like that song, that’s true,“ she says.

“Hello everyone, it is I, Ironmouse, coming to you live from my mom’s house. Going to sing you some songs because, uh, it’s the best form of stress release, you know what I mean?” she riffs. As the song kicks off, the tone becomes more pensive despite the chat being filled with little chibi Ironmouse emotes waving their glowing wotagei in unison. She starts, her voice growing more powerful as her signature trembling vibrato accentuates Sinatra’s defiant lyrics. She breaks down at several points in between the chorus, but regroups.

“To say the things he truly feels. And not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows. And did it my way!” she bellows to tens of thousands as the counter on her charity drive continues to tick up, blowing well past the funds allegedly stolen by a company that doesn’t exist anymore. Although VShojo’s “talent first” mantra doesn’t appear to have been genuine, in this charity drive, you can see why it probably should have been.

You can donate to Ironmouse’s charity campaign for the Immune Deficiency Fund here.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.