{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/who-reaps-all-the-superchats-a-large-scale","title":"Who Reaps All the Superchats? A Large-Scale Analysis of Income Inequality in Virtual YouTuber Livestreaming","arxiv_id":"2503.00825","date":"2025-03-02","proceeding":null,"authors":["Ruijing Zhao","Brian Diep","Jiaxin Pei","Dongwook Yoon","David Jurgens","Jian Zhu"],"abstract":"The explosive growth of Virtual YouTubers (VTubers)-streamers who perform behind virtual anime avatars-has created a unique digital economy with profound implications for content creators, platforms, and viewers. Understanding the economic landscape of VTubers is crucial for designing equitable platforms, supporting content creator livelihoods, and fostering sustainable digital communities. To this end, we conducted a large-scale study of over 1 million hours of publicly available streaming records from 1,923 VTubers on YouTube, covering tens of millions of dollars in actual profits. Our analysis reveals stark inequality within the VTuber community and characterizes the sources of income for VTubers from multiple perspectives. Furthermore, we also found that the VTuber community is increasingly monopolized by two agencies, driving the financial disparity. This research illuminates the financial dynamics of VTuber communities, informing the design of equitable platforms and sustainable support systems for digital content creators.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00825v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.00825v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"who-reaps-all-the-superchats-a-large-scale","repo_url":"https://github.com/brdiep113/chi-livechats","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}