After a complete talent exodus and debilitating financial controversy, VShojo is closing down.
VShojo has finally released a statement after days of both fans and former talents demanding an explanation. The agency was under fire after Ironmouse and other fellow Vtubers came forward to allege that the company had mismanaged funds and owed them copious amounts of unpaid dues.
VShojo closes its doors, as founder Gunrun apologises for company mismanagement
The statement was posted on VShojo’s official X (formerly Twitter) account. In it, company CEO and founder, Justin Gunrun Ignacio, more commonly known as Gunrun, admitted that “VShojo has failed.”
“I’ve mismanaged the company into the situation you’re all witnessing. So today, I am sharing the difficult news that VShojo is shutting down, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us to this point.”
The mismanagement in question is how VShojo has seemingly struggled with keeping up on giving dues to its talents, as confirmed by Kson, Henya the Genius, and Ironmouse.
However, when it came to the missing US$500,000 charity fund, Gunrun only stated that he was initially unaware that it was raised to be donated, and affirmed that “some of the money spent by the company was raised in connection with talent activity.”
A Community Note on the statement however, seemed to disprove this claim. The note reads: “Justin claims to not know the purpose of the funds, but he personally congratulated Ironmouse on the completion of her charity fundraising event and reposted Ludwig directly mentioning that half of the funds would go to charity.”
The note also provided links to the posts mentioned:
In this tweet, Gunrun congratulated Ironmouse with a direct reply to her celebrating the achievement, after concluding her Subathon event in 2024. It’s important to note that the Subathon had explicitly stated that half of the earnings will be donated to the Immune Deficiency Foundation.
In another link, it can be seen that Gunrun reposted streamer Ludwig Ahgren’s congratulatory post about Ironmouse’s achievement, where he also stated that she is “donating half the money raised to charity.”
The provided links puts Gunrun’s statement into question, as it seemed he counted on feigning ignorance of the purpose of the money that was earned, before using it as company funds.
Former talents grill Gunrun over the controversy
The statement also left VShojo talents deeply unsatisfied. Zentreya, who had announced her departure from the agency last 27 June, replied to the statement, stating “...you spent money which you didn’t even have without even warning us on god knows what, and you knew, don’t even lie, you knew that money was for charity and was supposed to be placed to the side to be untouched.”
Zentreya also gave us the exact number of money mismanaged by VShojo: a whopping US$11 million. She also blasted VShojo’s PR team, whom she claimed were ”unfit for their job.”
Geega, who announced her departure from VShojo on 25 June, also replied, saying “Instead of using talent money on operating costs, the company should have shut down or at least informed us, but you used us as cash cows to keep things afloat while keeping us in the dark.”
She also claimed that Gunrun prioritised paying out staff that he was friends with instead of putting talent first, making it clear that he was okay with “not prioritising the debts owed to the talent who MADE this company what it is.”
Her reply also alleged that the leadership involved were not doing their jobs: “We know which leadership worked on our contracts. We know which leadership constantly sat in vc playing games with staff instead of working on time-sensitive tasks for our events and debuts. We know which staff consistently leaked information about talent.”
Kson, who publicly tendered her resignation from the company in a livestream, took to question Gunrun’s motives, claiming that he lied to the Japanese branch of VShojo just a week ago that “everything was good and taken care of.”
For Ironmouse, she only had this to say:
Although VShojo is shutting down, the statement made by Gunrun regarding the controversy has left even more questions than answers. Even though there was an acknowledgment regarding the mismanagement of funds, the decisions and reasons that led up to this point are still unknown to fans, keeping them in the dark.
That being said, the disappointment and outrage from the community in response to Gunrun’s statement is palpable. As long as there is no outright transparency, the controversy is still far from over.
