A video showing a fan assaulting cosplay livestreamer Emily “Emiru” Schunk at TwitchCon 2025 made every online content creator’s worst nightmare go viral. It’s created a new crisis of confidence in Twitch as streamers worry about how seriously the Amazon-owned platform is taking their safety and security. Comments from Twitch’s CEO did little to dispel those concerns.
“The safety of our creators is our top priority,” Dan Clancy told Taylor Lorenz in an interview the day after the incident took place. “The challenge we face is a challenge in today’s society. It’s not limited to Twitch, it extends throughout our society.”
The executive waxed philosophical about community moderation before talking specifically about what happened with Emiru. “I do think that when you’re livestreaming, in many ways, since you control your community and you can ban people, you can make it so that those people that you don’t want engaging with you and participating with you, aren’t there.”
I asked Twitch CEO Dan Clancy about @emiru getting assaulted at Twitchcon and whether creators can trust the platform to keep them safe. Full interview will be out on my YouTube channel/podcast feed on Wednesday pic.twitter.com/wTH13vhjBH
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) October 19, 2025
He continued,
Now, what happened yesterday, obviously, was something that we care deeply about securing this environment. We’re looking very closely at everything that happened there, and I care deeply about Emi. She’s a friend of mine, and so I want to see how we can support her. This is just something we have to keep working on. I think everyone identifies our tools in terms of trust and safety as the leaders in the industry about helping creators, but that means there’s always more work to be done, because that’s the world we live in now.
But the actions of “leaders in the industry” is not how Emiru has been describing Twitch’s response to the assault at its most recent event. In a video published the same day as the Clancy interview took place, she accused Twitch of lying about its response, claiming the platform’s initial desire was to just ban the alleged suspect for 30 days instead of for life. Emiru also claimed that no one from Twitch security immediately came to her aid or apprehended the suspect to escort him from the show.
“Like if you watch the clip, the security guard who pushes the guy away is my security,” Emiru said. “The woman who pulls me to the back, my manager. If you’re a small streamer and you don’t have those resources or someone in your line’s not filming, what the fuck do you do? No one would have known.”
The incident has led to renewed warnings about Twitch personalities attending in-person events and even, in some cases, calls for new ownership of Twitch.
