Sexual harassment, 12-hour shifts without a break and “dark and disgusting” online abuse including threats of murder and rape are all in a day’s work for some of the world’s most popular female gamers.

Sophia White, 24, the UK’s most followed female broadcaster on Twitch, told the Sunday Telegraph she is a victim of “terrifying” threats from men who are angry that a woman has become successful in a traditionally male-dominated field.

Since being catapulted to worldwide fame she at the age of 20, men regularly harass her on Instagram, which she describes as “a hotbed for perverts”.

“They see a pretty girl and send a message about what they want to do to them,” she says.

The practice of live streaming video games emerged as a potentially lucrative job in the mid-2010s via sites such as Twitch and YouTube. Today, some streamers, who combine skillful game-play with entertaining commentary and command huge followings of millions of fans.

Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins, a 27-year-old male American, is the world's most popular streamer with over 10 million followers and an average of over 50,000 followers per stream. The top female is Australian Chelsea "xMinks" Sandy who has 360,000 Twitch subscribers.

But while video-game streaming has attracted vast audiences and can be highly lucrative, it remains riven with online abuse and misogyny, with female gamers often subjected to vile abuse and threats of sexual violence.