Health Struggles Drove Kyedae from Streaming. Now, She’s Back

The streamer talks about the "wake up call" that started her hiatus and why she decided now is the time to return

Since she first began streaming in 2020, Kyedae (full name Kyedae Shymko) has become one of the most popular female streamers on Twitch. When the 24-year-old started playing the 5v5 character first-person shooter Valorant, she was an unknown Canadian college student with almost no experience with video games. But in less than four years, she topped female streamer views on Twitch, often pulling in 1.6 million views in a single month. Fans were drawn to her gameplay, but also to her relationship with popular Valorant streamer Tenz (real name Tyson Van Ngo). 

Being a female streamer in a male-dominated industry means Kyedae has always had to deal with violent misogyny and ridicule online. But when public pressure, including online harassment and real-life stalking, coincided with mounting physical and mental health struggles, the streamer made a decision that’s often considered a death sentence in the industry. She turned the camera off.  

Kyedae has been on an indefinite hiatus from streaming since April 2025. Now after 18 months out of the spotlight, she’s making her return — with what she calls a brand new outlook on life, career, and what she wants out of her future. 

“I let [streaming] consume every aspect of my life,” Kyedae tells Rolling Stone. “But after taking a step back, I no longer feel the need to keep up with people’s opinions of me. Life isn’t just work. And I think my community will see that I’m happier.” 

After getting introduced to Valorant, Kyedae decided to try her hand at streaming gameplay. Becoming a successful streamer in the world of video games isn’t an easy task — especially if you’re not familiar with the game. Join an unknown first-person shooter multiplayer without a handle on the basics and the massacre is over before you’ve even figured out how to shoot. But she built an early and devoted audience by being open about the fact that she was still learning Valorant— and fans loved the idea of watching a streamer hone their skills in real time. “I don’t like to be half-assed with what I try. So when I started playing Valorant, I didn’t want to be mediocre,” she says. “I started putting a lot more time into playing. I think that’s the main reason why a lot of people were interested in watching my journey.” 

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There’s something incredibly earnest about watching an early Kyedae stream, where she laughs and celebrates even the smallest level up — compared to more recent streams where she kills enemies with a simple bat of the eye. But constant improvement requires more than a charming personality. It requires hours of work. At the height of her popularity, Kyedae was streaming between eight and 14 hours every day. And it started taking a toll. 

“With streaming, you’re constantly on. You feel like you always have to be working, you always have to be uploading, because irrelevancy is what can kill your career,” she says. “It can be really overwhelming at times. There’s no personal privacy. It gets to a point where it’s unhealthy.” 

In 2023, Kyedae was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a blood and bone marrow cancer. During her treatments, she tried to stream with a modified schedule, often rescheduling or canceling altogether to keep up with frequent doctors visits. “I was quite sick, but I was trying to stay on top of it,” she says. In 2025, she went into remission. But early this year, she had another health scare when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of endometriosis that required surgery. 

“With the endometriosis, I was really upset. After getting over such a big hurdle as cancer, and then for something else to pop up, I felt like my body was failing me,” she says. “When my doctor told me it was looking pretty serious,  it was a wake up call.” Kyedae called it — temporarily— quits. 

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During her hiatus, she spent time recovering, seeing family, and going on adventures her streaming calendar could never accommodate. It wasn’t all ease and mornings where she slept in. Even away from her stream, Kyedae was still the target of harassment; especially when she and her ex-fiance Tenz announced they had broken up. The two released a statement saying it was mutual. Vicious corners of the streaming world decided she was to blame. 

“So much has happened behind closed doors. Life happens before and after I stream. I don’t care to pay attention to what people have to say because at the end of the day, only the people in the relationship know what happened,” she says. “I’m still really young, and that was a beautiful chapter to look back on.” 

Kyedae thinks that most of the attacks stemmed from people’s parasocial feelings with her relationship. But she says she’s decided to block out the attention from trolls and harassment “Even at my lowest point in life, I have never thought to comment something nasty, to DM something weird, or [send] death threats,” she says. “ For [people] to be commenting these things just shows that they’re projecting their sadness onto my life. It’s background noise.” 

So why return now? The easiest answer is that Kyedae missed streaming. But she also says that she started considering her return when her health stabilized — and she realized that she finally had a better relationship with her career. “It took a bit of time to really detox from the rat race and really sit with myself to figure out what I wanted with my life,” she says. When she handled the online backlash from the breakup — and came out on the other side — she knew she was ready. 

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Kyedae tells Rolling Stone that she’s focused on what a return to streaming looks like without that constant pressure to succeed at all costs. Right now, it looks like figuring out a schedule that’s flexible for her doctors appointments. But she’s looking to expand her streaming focus into beauty and fashion content, as well — a way to find things other than gaming that pique her interest. 

“It’s been over a year and a half since I’ve streamed. I’m stepping back into a space that I’m familiar with, but so much has changed within that time,” she says. “I’m [nervous] but overall I’m really excited to get reconnected.  I have so much life to live — personally and professionally. I’m just super excited for what’s ahead.”