The Downfall, Brief Redemption, and Second Downfall of Adam Kovic.
After trying to redeem himself in the public eye, an internet personality reckons with his past.
In the post-#metoo era, it’s hard to say when someone is worthy of forgiveness. For Adam Kovic—former member of the Funhaus YouTube channel—things seemed to be trending in that direction.
Kovic has been in the public eye for over a decade. He started as a crew member for a show on G4, a defunct television channel based around tech and video games. Adam would then go on to work for Machinima, an also defunct website and YouTube channel based around video games. Kovic ended up working there for eight years, becoming one of Machinima’s most popular personalities. In 2015, Kovic and several other Machinima staff members left to start a new YouTube channel: Funhaus. Funhaus was under the umbrella of Rooster Teeth, an online media giant based out of Austin who have been making web content since 2003.
Funhaus specializes in content around video games. Primarily gameplay videos featuring the Funhaus cast. Video series like Demo Disk—where the crew would play old game demos that were released on CD—exemplify the channel’s charms and its bawdy sense of humor. Kovic was a key part of the channel. Often flanked by Bruce Greene and James Willems, who had also jumped ship from Machinima, Kovic was a constant on-screen presence for Funhaus. The channel formed a devoted following and seemed to be nothing but a positive for RT.
Things started to take a turn, however, when several prominent members of Funhaus left the channel. These departures were sudden and with little explanation. Kovic, for his part, showed no signs of leaving. Throughout the 2020 pandemic, Adam still appeared on the Funhaus channel regularly. In October of 2020 however, Kovic’s life would be irreparably changed when a scandal would force Rooster Teeth to fire him.
His termination came alongside that of Ryan Haywood, who worked for the Achievement Hunter channel, also owned by Rooster Teeth. Both men were outed by online forums in possession of damning photos and videos of the two—though their respective situations are unrelated to each other. Haywood was alleged to have had a relationship with a fan who was seventeen at the time, which included Haywood sending the girl nudes.
Kovic, meanwhile, seems to have been catfished by someone using photos of a porn-star. The catfish either solicited or was sent several photos of Kovic in varying states of undress, which included photos allegedly taken within the Funhaus offices. Most damaging for Kovic was a video of him and his wife, Jess Kovic, engaging in unspecified sexual acts. Whether Jess was aware the video was being taken is unknown.1
These videos and pictures had been included on a Google drive post, originally posted on a bodybuilding forum. According to this Reddit post, much of the early discussion and proliferation of these leaks came from the usual actors: 4Chan and Kiwi Farms.
Regardless of the source, the effect on Kovic’s life was immediate. He was fired shortly after the leaks surfaced. As if to add insult to injury, two former colleagues, Funhaus alum Lawrence Sontag and actor and frequent guest Rahul Kohli, took to Twitter to express their disdain for Kovic. Sontag was indirect, using lyrics from a song by Goldfinger to make his point. Kohli was less diplomatic, tweeting that he hadn’t been involved with Funhaus for over a year because of Adam. “Blame Adam Kovic and fuck Adam Kovic. Oh and it ain’t got shit to do with nudes.”
Other members of RT chimed in with similar statements of shock and horror. One former employee of RT, Aaron Marquis, had a different take on the situation. On October 8, 2020, Marquis tweeted simply, “I love Adam and Jess.” This came with no qualifying statement and without commentary on the controversy. Marquis has apparently been close friends with Adam and his wife for several years. He would be one of the only people to speak up for Adam in the wake of his firing.
So, it seemed that the public career of Adam Kovic was over. Not only had he been fired over misconduct, he had also done so amid a spectacle that rocked the RT community, For a little over a year, Kovic was radio silent. Then a year later he came back.
In October of 2021, Kovic posted a video, now deleted, that basically stated that he had taken time away from the spotlight to focus on rebuilding his personal life and his mental health. He took full responsibility for what happened and acknowledged that his life had been completely uprooted. Under the video, his wife Jess left a supportive comment.2
Soon after, another video came out, this one announcing the release of Kovic’s new book, a sci-fi novel called Rook. The book’s coauthor was Aaron Marquis, one of the few to show support for Kovic the year prior.
Marquis and Kovic recorded a video talking about the book and production process, but it has also been deleted. What survives is a podcast interview posted on the channel of YouTuber Critikal in November of 2021. The interview is cordial, and largely without reference to Adam’s past career. Critikal’s channel has over twelve million subscribers, so the appearance was probably a significant windfall for Marquis and Kovic. It also stands as one of the last traces of their partnership left on YouTube.
Which brings us to the Null+Void channel, Kovic and Marquis’ follow-up project to Rook. The channel mostly served as a host for their podcast of the same name. A Patreon account was set up to fud the channel, which is currently inactive. At least one non-podcast video was made on the channel, a satire of Big Tech and Elon Musk.
The podcast largely revolved around Kovic and Marquis discussing a series of broad topics every episode. Tonally, the conversations always felt a little downbeat. Mental health and trauma were frequent topics, as was self-improvement. Indeed, the podcast is listed under “Health & Fitness” on Apple Podcasts. While the first episodes were only available on YouTube, with Kovic and Marquis on-camera sitting across from one another, they did eventually offer an audio-only version. Currently, the only way to listen to the podcast is the audio version, as all the video exclusive episodes on YouTube have either been deleted or made private.
After his initial comeback video, the official Funhaus subreddit, with the support of two staff members, banned any new posts about Adam or his current projects. Despite this, Kovic had—seemingly—successfully moved on with his life. Unfortunately, his past would catch up with him.
In October of 2022, a year after Adam’s return and two years after his initial exile, a post was made by the mods of the Funhaus subreddit which gave the firsthand account of a former coworker of Adam’s named Misti Dawn. The two had worked together in the early 2010’s at Machinima. Misti claims that she had a brief consensual relationship with Kovic and that she believed him to be single at the time. When she found out that he was actually in a relationship, she broke it off and stopped interacting with him. Kovic, however, continued to pursue her for years at fan conventions and for unsolicited job offers at Rooster Teeth. Misti further claimed that Kovic was reported, more than once, to HR by another female staff-member at Machinima. According to Misti, this behavior had been a known quantity within Rooster Teeth, but nothing was ever done.
On their own, these accusations were serious. The situation became even worse for Kovic when other former and current members of Funhaus popped up in the thread to support Misti’s claims. Bruce Greene. a fixture of Funhaus from its creation in 2015 to his departure in 2019, said that he had been informed of Kovic’s alleged actions and had contacted Rooster Teeth’s human resources. According to Greene, he was “laugher off the phone by HR,” when he asked them to fire Kovic. Greene went on to say that the ultimate reason for his departure was due to RT’s inaction towards Adam Kovic.
James Willems, an active cast member at Funhaus and someone who starred alongside Kovic in hundreds of videos, showed support for Misti speaking out. He also clarified that he was aware at the time of at least some of the allegations that occurred in the Funhaus era. James made it clear that, regarding Kovic, “None of us worked to protect him.”
In the space of a day, the Adam Kovic story had gone from one in which he had made a series of mistakes that nearly cost him everything, to one where he was allegedly responsible for acts of misconduct and unprofessionalism spanning nearly a decade. Before Misti spoke out, Adam’s offenses in 2020, while certainly grounds for termination, weren’t necessarily unforgivable to a fanbase who have spent years being entertained by you. These new allegations change the perception of what happened in 2020. What before seemed like an isolated incident—a temporary lapse in judgement—now appears as the consequences of a long pattern of behavior.
Soon after this new flare-up in controversy, the Null+Void brand all but disappeared. The YouTube channel is completely scrubbed. Same goes for their Patreon, which is currently blank. Kovic has largely stayed off social media since 2020 and has thus far made no statement about the new allegations. Aaron Marquis has also not made a statement on any platform, though he still has a link on his Twitter to the official website of Rook. Kovic and Marquis haven’t released anything since late August. Currently, the future of Null+Void seems dim.
As for Adam Kovic, his second bout with infamy has left him in an even worse position than before. In 2020, there was no accuser, his misdeeds only really hurt himself and his family. Now, he is being confronted with an actual accusation, which has the support of several of his former coworkers. Two of whom—James Willems and Bruce Greene—are the ones most associated with Kovic in the public eye, having worked on and off camera for many years. For them to turn on Kovic, is a damning indictment of his character. With no professional supporters left, can Adam Kovic mount another comeback?
Perhaps it would be better for Kovic and his family if he just stepped away from the limelight for good. It’s possible these accusations only came to light because Kovic returned to YouTube. Then again, maybe this was always inevitable. The past never goes away, and people never forget certain things. It could be that Adam Kovic was always destined to be a victim of his past self. Unfortunately for him, we can change ourselves and how we act, but we can’t change things we’ve done. If Adam Kovic is still going to have a redemption arc, it just got a lot longer.
Kovic would mention Jess Kovic on the Null+Void podcast the following year, speaking as though they were still together. This could mean that she actually consented to the videos being taken, but the situation is still murky.
As the videos on the Null+Void channel have all been deleted, I have largely had to go off memory and what has been reported by others. If I have mischaracterized something about the channel, feel free to correct me.
Adam is a victim of fatherlessness and those women who came out about alleged abuse should feel ashamed.