Valkyrae: Back on Twitch, Onto TIME100 Creators

Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter spent five years locked into an exclusive YouTube streaming contract — the kind of deal most creators would take and never look back from. In January 2025, on her 10th streaming anniversary and her 33rd birthday, she went back to Twitch anyway, and became the platform’s most-watched female streamer again within a week. Eighteen months later, TIME put her on its 2026 TIME100 Creators list. In between, a skincare company she co-founded collapsed in under two weeks. Here’s the sourced version of how she got from a GameStop job to all three of those, and what the money behind it actually looks like.

From GameStop to 100 Thieves

Hofstetter, born January 8, 1992 in Moses Lake, Washington, was working at GameStop and posting gaming content to Instagram when followers encouraged her to try live streaming — she started on Twitch in 2015, according to Wikipedia’s sourced account of her career. Her breakthrough came in 2018 through Fortnite, and in October of that year she became the first female content creator signed by 100 Thieves, the esports and lifestyle organization founded by former Call of Duty pro Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag.

The YouTube years, and becoming a co-owner

On January 13, 2020, Hofstetter signed an exclusive streaming deal with YouTube, leaving Twitch behind for what would become five years. The move paid off in influence, not just views: on April 7, 2021, 100 Thieves named her and fellow creator Jack “CouRageJD” Dunlop as co-owners of the organization, alongside founder Nadeshot and existing investors Drake, Scooter Braun and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert — reported at the time by Tubefilter and Dexerto, both of which carry her own reaction on the record: “Looking back, I just feel like it’s been such a long journey. And now being, not just a co-owner, but a female co-owner, like how did this even happen!” Nadeshot, in the same reporting, called it “probably the most important day in 100 Thieves history.” Neither outlet reported an equity percentage or a valuation tied to the stake, and we haven’t found one from a source we’d cite — so we’re not putting a number on what the ownership is worth.

RFLCT: the other kind of scale

A profile that only lists the wins isn’t a profile. In October 2021, Hofstetter co-founded RFLCT, a skincare line marketed around protecting skin from “blue light” emitted by screens. It launched October 19, 2021, and was gone within two weeks: co-founder Joanna Coles announced the brand had “officially separated” from Hofstetter and pulled its products from roughly 400 stores by November 2, according to Tubefilter and beauty-industry trade outlet Glossy. The dispute was genuinely two-sided: dermatologists quoted by Glossy disputed whether blue light causes meaningful skin damage in the first place, while Coles framed the backlash as gendered, telling Tubefilter “it’s hard enough for young women to start a business in a male-dominated economy.” We’re not resolving that argument here — both the science criticism and the gendered-backlash framing are on the record, from named outlets, and readers can weigh them for themselves.

What she’s doing now

Hofstetter’s YouTube exclusivity lapsed at the start of 2025, and on January 8 — the same day as her anniversary and birthday — she streamed on Twitch again for the first time in five years. She didn’t ease back in: analytics tracker Streams Charts recorded 706,000 hours watched in her first week back, enough to retake the title of Twitch’s most-watched female streamer, as covered by Dexerto and Deltia’s Gaming. She kept her YouTube channel running alongside it — she hasn’t gone back exclusive to either platform.

The rest of 2025 and 2026 kept stacking up. In June 2025, her media company Hihi Studios launched its first project, a sci-fi webtoon called Bad Influence made with startup studio Otherly Productions, reported by Variety. And in June 2026, talent agency CAA signed her for representation — the latest stop in a run of agency moves that also included Range Media Partners (2022) and WME (November 2023), per trade coverage of the signing. TIME named her to its 2026 TIME100 Creators list that same year, describing her as someone who has “turned her Twitch audience into a massive digital-media career” — coverage we opened directly on TIME’s own site.

The brand deals

The clearest brand deal with real theater behind it is Gymshark. On September 10, 2022, the fitness apparel company named Hofstetter a Global Ambassador — its first-ever partnership with a gaming creator — and marked the announcement with a billboard reveal in Times Square, covered by Tubefilter, esports.gg and Dexerto. None of that coverage disclosed deal terms, so — same as the 100 Thieves stake — we’re describing the deal, not pricing it.

We are deliberately not citing a net-worth figure for Hofstetter. The sites that publish one disagree with each other by millions of dollars and don’t show their sourcing — the guessing-built-on-guessing this site’s standard exists to filter out.

What our checker can — and can’t — tell you about her

Hofstetter is a genuinely rare case for this feature: she’s currently active on both YouTube and Twitch, the only two platforms our free authenticity checker can score against a live account. We didn’t run that check for this piece, and nothing above is, or implies, an authenticity score for either of her accounts. At her scale — TIME100 recognition, an ownership stake in a company Forbes has valued in the hundreds of millions, an agency roster that includes Hollywood representation — “is this audience real” isn’t the live question her brand partners are asking; an analytics firm clocking 706,000 watch-hours in a single week is a harder number to fake than a follower count. Where the checker earns its keep is on the account about to sign its first deal, not one that’s already been vetted by CAA.

If you want to see what a live read looks like, you can run it yourself at /check/twitch/valkyrae or /check/youtube/valkyrae — and the same free tool works for any smaller YouTube or Twitch account you’re actually trying to vet before a deal.

The bottom line

A GameStop job, a Fortnite breakout, a first-female-creator title at 100 Thieves, an exclusive deal she eventually walked away from, a skincare brand that folded in eleven days, and a TIME100 slot the same year a Hollywood agency signed her — that’s not a single clean arc, it’s five separately reported facts that happen to belong to one person. The throughline is that she kept switching platforms and business lines in public, in full view of outlets that covered each move, which is a harder trail to fabricate than it is to follow.

Sources: Wikipedia, “Valkyrae”; Tubefilter, “Valkyrae, CouRage Join Ownership Circle Of Top Gaming Org 100 Thieves”; Dexerto, “Valkyrae & CouRage become 100 Thieves co-owners”; Tubefilter, “‘RFLCT’, Valkyrae’s Polarizing Skincare Line, Shutters 2 Weeks After Launch”; Glossy, “Valkyrae’s RFLCT shuts down less than two weeks after launch”; Dexerto, “Valkyrae reclaims Twitch throne as top female streamer”; Deltia’s Gaming, “Valkyrae Becomes Top Female Twitch Streamer”; Variety, “Rachell ‘Valkyrae’ Hofstetter’s HiHi Studios Sets ‘Bad Influence’ Webtoon Series”; NetInfluencer, “CAA Signs Valkyrae”; TIME, “Rachell Hofstetter” — TIME100 Creators 2026; Tubefilter, “Thanks to a deal with Gymshark, Valkyrae can now be found on a Times Square billboard”; esports.gg, “Valkyrae inks deal to become Gymshark Global Ambassador”; Dexerto, “Valkyrae blown away by fan meet-up after Times Square billboard reveal”.