I’m Retiring From Streaming

I think it is time to say this plainly: I am retiring from streaming.

Not taking a break. Not waiting for the next game to pull me back. Not disappearing for a few months and then pretending I have returned with a new strategy. I am done pressing the Go Live button.

Streaming was always a hobby for me. It was never my job, never my escape plan, and never the centre of my identity. I have a normal life, a normal job, people I care for, and other things I want to build. I streamed because I loved games and wanted to share that love with other people.

But “just a hobby” does not mean I was not dedicated to it.

TwitchTracker currently records 7,652.1 hours streamed across 262 games, with 617 followers and a peak of 55 viewers.[1] That is almost 319 full days of my life spent live. I started streaming around 2019 and kept going for more than six years, usually to a tiny audience, often without a microphone or camera - just the game, the stream, and whoever decided to stop by.[5]

I do not regret all of that time. Far from it.

The good memories were real

Some of my best streaming memories came during the COVID lockdowns, when I played Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate constantly. I met new hunting friends, joined ridiculous hunts, and had more fun than I knew what to do with.[8]

For a while, I found exactly what I had always imagined Monster Hunter could be. Four people sharing a hunt, failing together, laughing, trying again, and somehow turning “one more quest” into several hours. Some connections faded and some ended badly, but a few were real. I still cherish the hunters who cared about the atmosphere, the craft, and the thrill of the hunt rather than damage charts or clout.[13]

There were quiet streams where only one or two familiar names appeared. There were people who lurked while I played, people who joined my lobbies, and people who supported me even when there was nothing polished or professional about what I was doing. I was never trying to become a personality. I was a player sharing what I loved, and sometimes that was enough.

I also learned a lot. Streaming pushed me to experiment with technology, audio, video, websites, trackers, art, and music. Some of the things I build today grew indirectly from skills and curiosity that streaming helped develop.

So this is not me erasing the good years. They happened. They mattered.

The bad memories were real too

Unfortunately, affection for the good parts kept me around long after the bad parts had become too heavy.

I watched gaming communities turn friendship into networking and other people into resources. I saw backstabbing, ego, jealousy, gossip, cliques, coordinated bans, and stories repeated without anyone bothering to check whether they were true. I watched kind, passionate people get pushed aside while skilled or well-connected people were excused for treating others badly.[5][12]

I was not innocent in all of it. There were times when I stayed quiet because I did not want drama. There were people I continued to support because admitting what I saw would have meant losing a community I thought I needed. Looking back, that silence was not neutral, and I regret it.[12]

Eventually, streaming stopped feeling like sharing something I loved. It started feeling like entering a room where I had to watch every step, manage other people’s grudges, and wait for the next pointless misunderstanding. Even as someone who barely spoke on stream, I still ended up dragged into other people’s theatre. Apparently, if people are bored enough, they can manufacture conflict with a brick wall.[5]

The games were still fun. The culture around streaming increasingly was not.

I have written before about missing the days when people could simply geek out about games - when enthusiasm was not embarrassing, every opinion was not a performance, and every conversation did not have to become content.[4] I have also written about leaving parts of the Monster Hunter community without leaving the hunt itself.[11] Those were not isolated frustrations. They were warning signs that I kept trying to negotiate with.

And that is the real reason I am stopping.

A hobby is allowed to end

A hobby should add something to your life. It can challenge you. It can occasionally frustrate you. It can require effort and discipline. But when it consistently brings more negativity than joy - when it feeds anxiety, isolation, and depression instead of helping you feel alive - it is no longer serving its purpose.

At that point, quitting is not failure. It is self-respect.

There is a strange pressure online to keep going because you have already invested so much. Keep the schedule. Protect the audience. Do not lose momentum. Reinvent the channel. Try another game. Network harder. Turn yourself into something easier to sell.

No.

Those 7,652 hours are not a debt that requires me to give Twitch another thousand. They are proof that I gave this hobby a real chance.

I used to tell small streamers not to treat streaming like a job before it became one - to hide the live viewer count, ignore the fear of missing out, play what they genuinely loved, and let themselves enjoy the process.[2] I still believe that advice. I also believe the honest extension of it: if you no longer enjoy the process, you are allowed to stop.

The healthiest thing I can do now is call it while I still love games.

What comes next

I am not retiring from gaming. I am retiring from performing my gaming.

I want to load up a game because I feel like playing it, not because I need a title, a category, a schedule, or a reason for somebody else to watch. I want to get lost, experiment, play badly, pause whenever I want, and spend an evening accomplishing absolutely nothing worth clipping.

I want games to be games again.

I also want to put more of my energy into my life offline: taking care of myself, being present for the people around me, and giving my mind room to breathe. Not every meaningful part of life needs to be visible to an audience.

And creatively, I want to focus on KAIYO//SHARD, my music project. Music gives me somewhere constructive to put the feelings, ideas, and energy that streaming increasingly drained from me. I would rather spend an evening making a song, learning something new, or building a piece of art than sitting live out of habit while wondering why I am there.

This is not me giving up on creating. It is me choosing what I actually want to create.

Thank you

To everyone who stopped by over the years: thank you.

Thank you to the lurkers, the chatters, the people who joined a hunt, the people who shared a joke, and the people who kept me company through long and quiet streams. Thank you to everyone who followed, subscribed, gifted, donated, raided, or simply spent part of an evening there. You gave your time to a very small, very quiet stream, and I never took that for granted.

To the genuine friends I made along the way: the stream may be ending, but that does not erase what we shared. I hope we still cross paths - in a hunt, in a game, through music, or simply as people without a viewer count sitting between us.

There is sadness in closing something that occupied so much of my life. There is also relief.

I streamed because I loved games. I am stopping for the same reason.

It is time to enjoy them offline again.

Thank you for watching.

And, as always: Happy Hunting.

Sources

1. vlado_ms Twitch statistics and analytics
2. https://vlado.life/blog/few-things-not-to-do-as-a-small-streamer
3. https://vlado.life/blog/i-miss-geeking-out-about-games
4. https://vlado.life/blog/the-petty-theater-of-small-twitch-communities
5. https://vlado.life/blog/how-twitch-became-unbearable-to-watch
6. https://mh.vlado.life/articles/leaving-the-community-not-the-hunt
7. https://mh.vlado.life/articles/hidden-rot-gaming-communities-monster-hunter-retrospective
8. https://mh.vlado.life/articles/a-love-letter-to-monster-hunter