Sykkuno, one of Twitch’s top streamers, known for his healthy demeanor and for playing games such as Between us and GTA Online, left Amazon-owned platform for YouTube Gaming’s red willows this month. The move shocked the livestreaming space because Sykkuno was something of a household name on Twitch and boasted four million followers and 103 million total views since becoming a more consistent streamer in April 2019. However, the move made sense for him as, as he revealed during his first-ever YouTube Gaming livestream, the Google-owned platform gave him a slightly better deal, and Twitch gave him a rather unfortunate misspelling in an official email.
You may not have heard of him, but Sykkuno has been on YouTube for years. As a matter of fact, an old report from him can be traced back to April 2006 where he uploaded League of Legends and Minecraft content before switching to his current channel, which now has 2.75 million subscribers, in September 2011. While Sykkuno spent much of his early career on YouTube, he only made his mark as a streamer in April 2019 when he began broadcasting regularly on the Twitch channel, he created years ago. In August 2020, he joined a collective of streamers called Offline TVwhich also includes other online personalities like DisguisedToast and LilyPichu, and although he left the group a few months later In November, it continued to show rapid growth. Now, with four million Twitch followers, Sykkuno has left the Amazon-owned platform because he believes he’ll be “much, much happier” on YouTube.
To share the news of his move to YouTube on social media, Sykkuno went live on May 3rd to discuss the reasons for the change. It was a multi-faceted statement spurred by the negotiation of his Twitch contract. He said he went to the company to ask for a better offer because Twitch’s original offer was “just bad,” although he didn’t offer any specifics. Twitch came back with what Sykkuno called a “very, very good offer” that almost convinced him to stay since it was “pretty dead even” with YouTube. He even said that if Twitch’s offering had been “a little worse,” he would have stayed on the platform.
And yet he didn’t. In the end, YouTube made the better offer, but that wasn’t the only deciding factor. Aside from increasing the amount of money YouTube was offering, the move was confirmed by a peculiar email Sykkuno received from Twitch.
After sharing some stats about his Twitch performance — he was the 28th highest-earning streamer and the 45th most-followed streamer of all time — he then threw up an email that the company gave him had sent, and featured an apparent Twitch announcer who spelled his name as “Sukkuno.” You can almost feel the embarrassment emanating from Sykkuno as he discussed the email. He was so shocked that he messaged people asking if it was a phishing scam because he couldn’t believe Twitch would do that to his name.
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“Maybe I have too big an ego or something, but I was shocked,” Sykkuno said during the livestream. “I really thought I was being scammed. I was afraid to click on that email because I was like, ‘Am I going to get a virus?’”
There was some hilarity when Sykkuno joked a bit about the unfortunate misspelling, but he closed the segment by expressing how underappreciated Twitch felt for him. Notably, Sykkuno’s move comes during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which is when Twitch is scheduled to take place “Celebrate and Recognize” the tremendous impact AAPI streamers have had, not just on Twitch but on gaming culture as a whole. Sykkuno is an American of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, and misspelling his name even if it’s not his real name seems pretty negligent. No wonder he didn’t feel valued, especially since Anti-Asian sentiment is rising around the world but especially in the US due to the ongoing pandemic.
kotaku has reached out to Sykkuno and Twitch for comment.