Twitch has admitted it “failed” streamer Emiru after she was assaulted at TwitchCon, both in “allowing [the assault] to occur, and in our response following.”
At TwitchCon 2025, Emiru was assaulted by a man who crossed multiple barriers in San Diego Convention Center to grab the 27-year-old streamer and cosplayer’s face and forcibly kiss her during a meet and greet. Emiru, real name Emily-Beth Schunk, has since urged fellow creators to “seriously consider not attending” future TwitchCon events, and confirmed she was pressing charges against the assailant. A viral video caught the interaction.
So some freak just assaulted Emiru at @TwitchCon . This behavior is fucking disgusting. I’m amazed that she still came back to finish the Meet and Greet line, honestly she deserves the utmost of respect. THIS HAS TO STOP!!!@EmiruUpdatess @emiru pic.twitter.com/pyO2QHQ9Pv
— BaconCrumbz 🥓 (@BaconCrumbz) October 18, 2025
Emiru was shocked not only that the man was able to reach her without Twitch security intervening, but also disappointed in both Twitch’s support of her immediately after the incident, and its statement that it quickly intervened and removed the assailant, which she called “a blatant lie.”
In a follow-up interview conducted during TwitchCon, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy claimed “the challenge we face is a challenge in today’s society. It’s not limited to Twitch, it extends throughout our society.”
“Now, what happened yesterday, obviously, was something that we care deeply about securing this environment,” he said. “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.”
Late on Friday, Clancy issued another statement via the official Twitch X/Twitter account, this time acknowledging the company “failed,” both in “allowing [the assault] to occur, and in our response following.”
“First, I want to be upfront and take accountability for the security incident that occurred during Emiru’s Meet and Greet,” Clancy wrote. “It shouldn’t have happened and we take that very seriously. We failed, both in allowing it to occur, and in our response following. We mismanaged our communications about the incident, and that includes the comments I made. I apologize to Emiru for all that took place.”
Clancy said Twitch was now “doing a comprehensive review of overall event safety and security,” and “examining everything, from how we do [Meet and Greet] sign ups, to the layout, to increased security controls.”
However, in a livestream over the weekend, Emiru claimed Twitch had not apologized directly to her, and alleged Twitch released its statement without consulting her.
“I think everyone knows about last week, the stuff that happened at TwitchCon,” she said. “I did see the Twitch tweet that I believe went out [on Friday] […] I was never reached [or] apologized to privately. They put that out without consulting me. I didn’t know that they were going to do that. So that was… yeah.
“I’m glad that they’re trying to take some level of accountability, but there’s a lot of things that they didn’t mention in the tweet that I feel like should have been mentioned,” she added. “More stuff’s been happening behind the scenes. Everything I said on my [first] stream was accurate, except for one thing — I was wrong about one thing. I was going over the tweet that Twitch initially put out where they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, this thing happened to a high profile creator. You know, the police were on site. We’re cooperating with law enforcement investigations.’ What I was wrong about was they were not cooperating with law enforcement investigations.”
Emiru added that on the Monday after the convention, she received a call from San Diego police saying they couldn’t proceed with charging the assailant because Twitch wouldn’t share the name of the person they believed had assaulted her.
“I found out that on Monday, when I got a phone call from the San Diego police. They basically said, ‘Hey, we can’t really do anything right now because [Twitch] apparently know the name of the guy, but they’re not giving it to us until a warrant goes through.’ Which, if you know anything about that stuff, it usually takes a while. Even if it’s expedited, which it was for me, it still takes a lot of time.
“And they’re like, ‘Yeah, they’re refusing to give us the name,’ which as far as I’m aware is a very common company thing, where they don’t want to give out names of potential people involved in crimes because then that person could maybe sue them for giving their name to police. That’s what my lawyer said. But basically, Twitch was trying to make sure that the guy that assaulted me didn’t sue them, which meant that the police were not able to work on the case right away.
“I was very frustrated because I didn’t know that on Saturday. I would have said that if I knew,” she added.
Emiru then detailed how someone had contacted her manager after the incident, reporting that someone matching the description of the guy had come into their place of work and said something along the lines of, “oh, I’m travelling to Texas and I caused quite a stir at TwitchCon.”
“This person reached out to my manager, reached out to police, but because all this stuff was delayed, this guy was able to get really far away from San Diego, allegedly, and this whole time my manager was begging Twitch, ‘Please give us his name, we don’t know who this person is,'” she explained. “‘For all we know, he lives around where Emi and her roommates live, I can’t help her if I don’t know who this person is,’ and they were refusing to do it.
“But after that tip, my manager demanded the info from Twitch so they did end up giving it to police, but not my manager as far as I know. The investigation’s still going on but it’s been a huge mess because of all the delays and refusal to work with the police. It’s ongoing, I can’t say too much about it, but obviously I ran this by my lawyer.”
She thanked her manager for her support as well as covering for extra security, stating: “Twitch did not offer anything like that.”
Emiru continued: “My hope is that there’s some kind of public resolution so that people who have seen this and know about everything’s that happened can feel better about it. Like I said, I don’t feel like it’s just about me. It could have been anyone that it happened to, a small streamer who’s not as lucky to have the resources or the reach that I have. It’s very scary and just very, very frustrating.
“I don’t want to just let this be a thing that they’re hoping will just blow over and gets swept under the rug,” she added. “I’m done with going to TwitchCon. Probably done entirely with convention streams. I feel like it’s just time, you know, and I think that’s probably true for a lot of streamers.
“It’s just crazy. I just never thought things like this would happen or I’d ever be doing a stream like this.”
Photo by Robin L Marshall/Getty Images.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
