Valkyrae explains why she took a break from YouTube streaming

Streamer Valkyrae has explained why she took a break from YouTube streaming in her latest live on the platform.

Having just celebrated her 29th birthday, Valkyrae (real name Rachel Hofstetter) has shown no signs of slowing down in recent years, and her move from Twitch to YouTube at the start of 2020 has proven to be an incredible change for both herself and the YouTube streaming platform. Just last week, Valkyrae took over from Pokimane as the most-watched female streamer with her 23.6m hours watched coming out above Pokimane’s 23.3m. But even the most successful creators struggle and need breaks. Valkyrae recently took a week-long break from streaming, leading many to ponder what the reason might be.

In her latest stream on Sunday, January 17, Valkyrae explained that she took a break because she had already fulfilled her contracted hours for streaming. She said, “I signed a contract with YouTube a year ago and as some of you didn’t know and some of you did learn later, I have streaming hours to fulfill and I owe 100 hours a month, but I went a little crazy and streamed too much last year which is very bad for my health.” (Topic starts at 9:20) https://youtu.be/KEnXRpc1wv0?t=563 She said that the break was largely for the sake of both her mental and physical health, adding, “I turned 29 on January 8… it’s probably a good time to turn into an adult so I’m going to do that by probably changing my lifestyle a lot.”

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She explained that she has problems with her gut-health and that she thinks she has an auto-immune skin disease, so as a result she’ll be changing up her diet and cooking more often. Valkyrae took a break from social media in May last year for mental health reasons, and so she could take time away to focus on herself and her creativity. In the future, Valkyrae’s fans can expect more cooking content as she focuses on changing up her lifestyle, she said, but that she will only stream her required hours rather than going overboard as she did in 2020.