Hololive Is So Financially Cooked...

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]CEO Motoaki Tanigo broke down in tears after his self- financed video game Holo Earth generated $23 in revenue. [ __ ] dude. This game cost so much money. I'm so [ __ ] Real. No, but I I love that meme. Uh I thought it was funny whoever tweeted that. Uh I was like, that's a good way to open the stream. But um yeah, Holo Earth is shutting down. So service is scheduled to come to an end on June 28th and they actually spent $20 million on this software infrastructure. I guess like they were trying to ride the the wave of the metaverse or whatever. Cover pissing away money.

[00:00:47]How? Well, I guess games are expensive to make. I don't [ __ ] know. It's a lot of money. The reactions to this are mostly criticism towards cover cuz people are mostly saying that um well they they could have invested that in the talents and the streamers. However, I'll add the cover always they always marketed this game as something it's it wasn't under the whole life branch. It was always kind of separate from it.

[00:01:16]However, I mean, every subdivisions of Cover Corp, it all goes through the same pool of money and it all affects my stocks. Like, Chris, the Holo Simply $17 million in losses for that game.

[00:01:31]It's uh it's kind of crazy, but yeah. Uh whoop, sorry, I knocked my mic there. I hope it wasn't too loud. But uh both the website and the financial made it clear that the metaverse part of the company was always separate from the VTuber production part. But of course the the metaverse assets and resource are getting folded into the existing you know cover core business and it's also like profits that they could have perhaps reinvested elsewhere or that people cared about more. I mean it's kind of like me starting new YouTube channels and then after a while being like well maybe this isn't so worth it after all. We tried uh but we're losing money and this money could be better used somewhere else. So then you shut it down except on a million dollar scale.

[00:02:17]However, it's not just criticism and I was a bit surprised to see that because a lot of people are actually quite upset that it's shutting down. A lot of people are just saying, well, they should have known it was a waste of money, yada yada. Nobody really asked for this. It was also like marketed as this game, you know, it was people thought it would be combat base like you know a big openw world uh JRPG all of that jazz. So of course a game like that would require so much resource but they tried to do so much with it.

[00:02:52]like they wanted it to be a game with gameplay, but they also wanted it to be a place where the VTubers could do virtual meet and greets and they also wanted it to be a place where they could hold virtual concerts. So, it's kind of like the issue when when you're a company, you got to do what you're best specialized in. And it feels like they were aiming for too much. And it was too much of an ambitious project because there was some gameplay, but there was like nothing to do in that gameplay really. Most people would just sit in the hub and do nothing or try to catch the girls when they were online. People wanted a game like NTE, but a game by NTE is developed by, you know, game companies that have the experience to make those games and all of their resources go just towards developing this game. Yeah. So VR chat basically if they're just hanging around those little game plays probably like VR chat.

[00:03:48]And what about Facebook? Is the metaverse still going on like on Facebook as well or they they're also shutting that down? It seems like, you know, they were just I don't know what you guys think of that, but it seems like they were trying to chase that trend kind of like the NFTs were a trend for a while or crypto and all of that and it's just a trend that unfortunately didn't pay off. They should have done collab with a gacha game instead. Yeah, that would have been great. Or teamed up with a gacha game studio cuz they've done collab with them, but something more like a whole life world. Like a whole life game. Exactly. It tried to be too much. ended up being just a mid experience as opposed to a great one.

[00:04:24]Yeah, they shut it down, too. Okay.

[00:04:26]Yeah. So, it's just it's just a money dumpster fire that nobody cares about.

[00:04:30]It was a huge loss on Facebook, too. O yeah, they killed Metaverse a year ago.

[00:04:38]The whole life was a year too late to kill it. So, again, however, a lot of people really liked it. This person for example, a lot of uh the people that really enjoyed it were people who lived overseas or for example this person is like I live in South America and realistically speaking I'm never going to get a meet and greet of any official kind. So this shared virtual space was as close as I could get as one to one of the holo members. And then you know he's showing um a screenshot where he was close to Iris in game. So this is like the the most proximity they'll ever be to their idols and oh she and this game gave them an opportunity to do that. So I don't want to completely brush them aside. This person is like so much potential for concerts and hang out with the talents that isn't offered in any other way right now. I hope this feature will resurface in a new in the future.

[00:05:30]It's a photo with Fuamoko uh with the fans. This was Oh shame. It was a good concert platform. I hope that part can be reused at least. I mean, I hope so.

[00:05:40]The image is pretty is a pretty good quality, too. Look at that. It looks great. Like, this looks good. Meta is dead. And on live support, someone rem I just hope that Thiago's new involvement shows improvement to talent. Sorry for your stocks, too. Yeah, I mean, my stocks might be better off without this impediment. And we do have changes on the Yago side and supporting the talents, which I'll get to in a second.

[00:06:05]So yeah, I feel like again it could have been resources better invested or better managed in general because I think it there has to be a way where it was possible to do this whole meet and greet and concert setup without it costing $20 million. And then some people were wondering are the employees from the Holo Earth project going to get axe too?

[00:06:27]Well, there wasn't that many devs. I think we said there was around like 80 or less. So these will probably be absorbed in other department as they usually are when things like that h happen. And there's also been the cover's recent uh financial results briefing that came out. And there's big news there because in the talent management department which was always a sub department of a of the Vtuber division, it's now becoming a separated department with Yago as its head director. So now Yago himself will be directly responsible for how his talents are managed. Like that's huge because we always wanted Yago to do that. We trust in his vision of the company. We don't trust in the investors vision of the company and we don't trust them to make the right decisions for the idols. And the well-being of the idols is important for the fans and it's important for them to perform well. So I think that's that goes into what's important for us, right? Yeah. The goat's going to assume the right control. We need that. So whole life today tweeted big news from cover recent financial result briefing.

[00:07:37]One talent management is now its own independent department. Yago personally took over as head of both the talent management and operation divisions as of April 2026. It's not just a waste and that the fundamental tech they built is all assets and experience for future development. Failure is never just a failure. Well, I hope they do learn from that and that the the resources they got they can reuse for other stuff. I'm not too sure how that works on the tech side. The idea that investor have vision is hilarious. Their entire vision is just dollar science in their eyes. Did you look at cover's stock chart today up at the end? Really? Let's go. Let's [ __ ] go. They said the tech will be integrated into other stuff. Nice. Good news. to better concentrate management resources. These are covers three strategic pillars going forward. I think you guys will like these. One, supporting outstanding talents. Two, developing the company's proprietary tech. And three, discovering and nurturing new talents. Is this in regard to the new academy they're building? I'm wondering. Covers a Vtuber business strategy. Is building a nextgen talent ecosystem pivoting away from Olarf/Mverse dev. Thank god and investing in media mix global expansion and cost optimization. Their business model is a cycle. Talent, value creation, streaming, music, R&D, talent management equals better fan experience, lives, events, goods, UGC's, and media mix.

[00:09:08]TCG, which TCG is the only thing keeping their merch sales afloat right now, I think, cuz their merch even went down this year. Manga anime global collapse back to the talent value creation. Cover says they're currently in an investment phase, shifting from quantity, from brand expansion to quality. And I think we like that. Building a stronger foundation before re-entering a growth acceleration phase. And then we have three pillars for sustaining talents.

[00:09:35]One, developing a creative environment by reducing production burden plus improving creative quality. Two, strengthening talent management through comprehensive medium to long-term talent support, including the increase of staff. and they do need more staff. I'm glad that they're decided to hiring more staff to manage the talents because some of them feel like they're overburdened with works and task and hide/ return planning and ensuring a healthy community through anti-harassment measures plus fan cocreation initiatives. I haven't been able to buy merch even though I wanted to buy due to the tariffs. They're like paying the Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, I saw a few um tweets about that. Let me find them.

[00:10:16]They actually you took a huge hit to most sales and even their live streaming profits went down this year. I think the economic stagnation is really starting to hit them because it's also not just happening like for us in North America, it's happening worldwide. All right, so this is Chris the Holo Pro S. He loves Cover Corp as we do. Covers fully. Your financial result is out, but it ain't pretty. Due to tariffs, the merch revenue was impacted pretty heavily and because of the shutdown of Holo Earth, this quarter is basically a loss of profit which made them achieve only half of the fullear profit forecast. Because of failing to meet the fullear forecast, Cover took full responsibility by taking 20% monthly salary from Yago and other directors for two months while also buying back 3 million shares of stock so that their shareholders aren't impacted heavily due to the loss. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the buyback. So, the Remma shares won't take such a dip.

[00:11:16]Actually, that might be why the stocks ended up like higher today. But, um, poor Yago. I feel like RKU Tazoomi has never ever taken a pay cut. And this is the second pay cut Yago's taken so far.

[00:11:28]And for the next fiscal year of 2027, Cover decided to keep that 50 billion yen revenue and 7 billion yen profit goal with second half being the main hitter for the company. cover now relies on the success of Holo Dreams and Holo TCG while hopping their talent while hoping their talent management is fixed ASAP. But I'm pretty sure everything kind of went down. I saw another post basically saying that uh the live streams is also down. The merchandising is down due to tariffs and shipping prices that are increasing due to fuel.

[00:12:00]And also it also cited a general consumer behavior which I believe means it just people are spending less because they've got less money to spend on you know leisure stuff. If you barely got enough money to pay the groceries, you don't have money to spend on VTuber merch, unfortunately. And uh their whole life TCG thing is the one merch that is selling by far the best. So they're going to keep uh investing in that at the very least. The concerts are also down. Although they have they are making way more concerts than before. They are earning less money. So that could be an issue. And uh yeah, I think that was it.

[00:12:42]But they need to like revamp. They need to they need to streamline every single thing that isn't a streamline right now and that isn't like profitable or they're going to run into a wall and then they'll have to do additional cuts for things that we care about later down the line. So, I think some innovation and revamp is really on the menu right now for everybody. You got to keep thinking of products that the consumer wants. And when I say products, I'm not just I'm not talking about merch. I'm talking about stream events, you know, um stream ideas, things that will make people excited. And often in those sectors, it means innovation and being creative and thinking outside of the box. Where other people are starting to decide between fun and having enough gas to go to work, oh yeah, you don't say. I mean, it's like somebody invites me to go to the restaurant now. I'm like, I'll think about it. I've always been to the already been to the restaurant once this month. I can't afford like twice. Yeah, they need to stop the burnout and fast.

[00:13:46]But the the TCG art is so good and TCGs usually sell so well. When I went to Japan, like there was like the One Piece TCG. Well, obviously there's a Pokemon one. I feel like every big anime franchise now has a TCG. What is happening with the California branch? I haven't read anything about that. Yeah, I'm wondering what's going what's go They did say they wanted to continue their overseas expansion. like they want to continue in the global expansion, whatever that means. In the fullear financial report, they also do two things. Clarifying the existence of Mech Park and that it will not replace the classic whole life auditions. Oh, that's their academy. So, I've also seen some people criticism about this academy thing because so far all the talents are like found through street casting which means it's just like talents that they found in the wild. They are not like bred and groomed to become idols. I'm not using the word groom in terms of like PDF file like groom into forming them into idols kind of like you would groom somebody to become a king but they want the talent training. I don't know what's that going to produce or how much money they're going to get from it but maybe it's going to give them like a sustained pool of talents to to find people from and to release. Made another post. Cover's next annual shareholder meeting will be very special and very crucial for Cover. It will be their 10th anniversary of the company. Oh [ __ ] already Holo Earth is gone. Holo Stars got downsized. Swiss's revenue is managed by other company and the talent problem is not addressed enough. This is it. This is where Cover needs to figure out and choose a definite goal for the sake of the company's future. Currently, Cover felt like they lost their identity, putting too many eggs in many different baskets. Now they need to decide which one they should prioritize.

[00:15:32]I agree. And also I I think this was not a good strategic decision. Swiss's revenue should have been managed by cover or cover should at the very least be getting a huge like cut because they own the IP. Can't you can't just give away an IP like that. There's also this Axel clip talking about Holo Stars that I haven't seen yet.

[00:15:55]>> Nice. Draw a contact and a foul. Two free throws. Desperate time calls for desperate measures. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

[00:16:03]Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Mr. Serios has got to make bank for the couple of new covers coming out soon. It's going to be pretty cool.

[00:16:10]>> Oh, he's at a Chinese hot pot. I went to one of those with Barrett in Japan and he was crying cuz it was too spicy and I was laughing at him.

[00:16:17]>> You guys are going to love the next one that's going to come. I I don't know if it's going to be the next one or the next next one, but it's going to be pretty cool. This is the 10 man cover.

[00:16:25]Hell yeah. Oh, exciting exciting cover.

[00:16:29]I'm excited for an exciting cover, too.

[00:16:31]Any hints for the group cover? It's kind of like a choirish one. I think it's close to like is hold her IP for trans.

[00:16:40]It's hard to say. Yeah, but she gave it to she signed it over to cover. They had no way to separate it. So technically it is there.

[00:16:48]>> Sounds like a choir like song I guess.

[00:16:51]But yeah, for the 10 man cover there's going to be um I'm going to run back uh the remember like for the Mr. Shot and Freud one we did like little teasers.

[00:17:00]I'm going to be running back the teaser.

[00:17:03]Hey, try to bring back a little bit of hype maybe back on the table. Kind of miss doing those. I feel like right after that, that's when I started kind of burning out from doing [ __ ] I think like after that 6 months or like eight months after that [ __ ] one big cover, I had like three covers in a row where I already paid for [ __ ] like go down the sinkhole and I was like I had a huge fight with [ __ ] like management and I'm like, you know what? [ __ ] it. I'm not doing [ __ ] anymore.

[00:17:32]>> Wait, wait, wait, wait. What does he mean by he paid for it and it went down the sinkhole? Did the covers not get released? What happened?

[00:17:44]So now I'm over here. It's a bit better, I guess. Um, and all that. We'll try to run it back slowly but surely, you know, taking back the baby steps of how things were. I I mean it's like you know I love putting in the work but there's just so much that I can do on my end you know I need I need them to work on their end as well and you know our team now works really well really nicely and by our team I mean like the stars EN team um which is like our mans and stuff they they work really hard um people at studio yes they work hard too like who helps us with everything I'm not saying that everyone works hard though let's just say that. So, >> yo, that's a job if I've seen one.

[00:18:34]>> Yeah. Um, there's just so much the people who can do their stuff can do. It just needs to be from all angles.

[00:18:40]>> Put them on blast axle. Who's not doing their job? Tell us the names. And when for example that 8 months or 6 months, I forgot how long it was where they [ __ ] with me and you know I don't get back anything that I've spent on even I asked him about it.

[00:19:00]>> When [ __ ] like that happens, it really does demotivate you.

[00:19:03]>> Oh yeah. Okay. So he did spend money on the covers. It seems like nothing something happened with them where he just lost money. I'd be pissed, too. I'd be super pissed. Yeah, but stuff like that hasn't been happening. Um, other than the I guess the announcement that was made like a while ago, but I feel like that was less of a disrespect to us, but it was more of like a disrespect to you guys, the fans. like we can take [ __ ] you know, as long as they don't [ __ ] like blatantly do [ __ ] on purpose to us, which um seems like has been the case in some certain uh ways like that 6, eight month [ __ ] I was talking about. But them being like, oh, you know, >> no, but it's like if you're going to pay for everything and nothing comes out of it, you might as well be indie. Yeah, but I I know I have an idea. I know how to save cover and holo enolive. Listen to this chat. We got to recreate the pandemic setting. And I can do that. We can do this together. Kind of like in Fallout how they plotted like world destruction so they could sell more like um nuclear bunkers. We're going to do that. I'm going to recreate the pandemic by starting a new virus. My kitchen will be ground zero. I am releasing the mold.

[00:20:22]Yes.

[00:20:24]Yes. CO 2.0 launches tomorrow. Yeah.

[00:20:27]Shut up investors. The idea suck. Rem's got this. Okay. Global domination is on the menu, boys. The antivirus.

[00:20:37]I'm fully on board. Supreme reader leader. Let's go. Release the mold.

[00:20:45]We need to be in a position to capitalize from it, though. We need to like have this new invention ready to go, ready to sell on Amazon, like a mold filter. mask or something that will sell at a 1,000% profit. And by that we will save the future of Vtubing.

[00:21:12]Like the we're downsizing because of this this and blaming it all on you guys. I felt like was a huge [ __ ] pile of [ __ ] that they did. I didn't really like that. You know, they could have just worded it. He even really didn't like the wording on the announcement. It seems like AX actually thinks that uh it wasn't a lack of support at all. It was just a lack of them not managing their resources well.

[00:21:38]Biohazard Reema's revenge. Yo, like everybody's on board here. Is it a brilliant idea or is it a brilliant idea? We got this. I'm actually excited for this idea.

[00:21:50]>> Much nicely, I guess in a better way in my opinion. But >> I mean Yeah. I mean, you you get what I'm trying to say, right? You get it.

[00:21:57]Like, like, you guys you guys understand that feeling that you guys felt when that [ __ ] happened. Um, just imagine that happening to us for the past um uh 2, three years. Yeah. Um the recent 6 months, not so much. 6 months to a year, not so much because of the new team and all that. But until then, it was it was rough. It was rough, let's be honest.

[00:22:20]So, yeah. But because they've shown me that I can have these opportunities now.

[00:22:26]Uh I'm trying to get back on my baby foot, get back into what I used to do.

[00:22:31]And I like I can't just go back fully into like passion that I've lost, you know? Like I we need a meme coin for the investors. Yeah, it's going to be called dollar horse or Oh, wait, wait, wait. Or we could write it like horse but have the s be a dollar sign like the crypto coins always are spelled. had so much passion when I came in and when I was doing it for the first 2 years and there's a reason why it all disappears you know these passion I just have to slowly but surely regain it and like not everyone feels the same way as me obviously some people might have things differently going for them um which may result in people feeling different ways some people could have it better than me some people could have it worse right so not everyone's like me but in my case is what I'm Oh, what the [ __ ] is up? You blew a layup.

[00:23:27]All right. Well, interesting clip from Axel here. Hey, you don't forget to like and subscribe and hit that bell button and I'll see you in the next