In April 2022, a clip of Watkins playing Valorant on a live stream surfaced. In the clip, he tells a female player: “Get off the fucking game and do your husband’s dishes.” This resulted in one of the game’s producers, Sara Dadafshar, permanently banning Watkins from Valorant and all other Riot Games titles. YouTube’s global head of gaming creators, Lester Chen, replied to the clip, saying he was “on it.” Watkins soon apologized for his behavior, acknowledged that it was “wrong,” and claimed that he was receiving racist comments from other players that day.

On July 4, 2022, during American Independence Day, Watkins set off a Pikachu firework inside his bedroom, almost burning it down, which attracted media attention. He hit 10 million subscribers on YouTube during this month. Later in July 2022, Watkins received a community guidelines strike as well as a one-week ban on YouTube after livestreaming his character being fellated in a sexual Minecraft mod named “Jenny’s Mod” to 96,000 live viewers as well as the options “Blowjob,” “Sex,” and “Strip” displayed on screen. He selected the “Blowjob” option. Initially, he censored the screen as it was happening, but he kept changing it from censored to uncensored. Eventually, he left the screen uncensored, and his character was seen expressing sexual activity. Watkins later confirmed the strike and purported that he may not return to YouTube, but did.

In August 2022, he was swatted while livestreaming on YouTube. Officers handcuffed Watkins, and his cameraman was forced to end the stream. Watkins claimed that he had been placed in jail and that Adin Ross had to bail him out, allowing him to return to streaming on August 11.

In September 2022, Watkins played in the Sidemen Charity Match. A clip of him went viral in which he became frustrated at English referee Mark Clattenburg for disallowing his goal to be offside, and in response, Watkins proceeded to whip him with the shirt he removed while celebrating, which resulted in him receiving a yellow card.

In November 2022, Sky Sports announced that they would stop featuring him on their platform after the emergence of past misogynist and derogatory comments made by Watkins. The platform also removed all content featuring Watkins. On November 16, he garnered controversy for allegedly doing a ‘pump and dump scheme’ cryptocurrency scam after he started a livestream promoting The Paradox Metaverse, an action-adventure game awarding players Paradox Coin. The next day, he went live to address the controversy and apologized, saying “I do so much stuff for y’all, I made a mistake. I’m not that smart, I’ma be honest, I made a mistake that I wish I never did but I’m not a scammer.”

In December 2022, he won the Streamy Award in the “Breakout Streamer” category during the 12th Streamy Awards. That same month, during the round of 16 match between Portugal and Switzerland, Watkins garnered controversy for his behavior toward a Chinese spectator of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, which was interpreted by many as racist. During a live stream, he approached a man wearing an Argentina jersey to question him. Visibly confused, the man specified that he did not speak English, which prompted Watkins to start repeatedly hurling “Konnichiwa,” a Japanese greeting, and start uttering sounds reminiscent of Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese. When a clip of the live stream started circulating online, he uploaded an apology video to his Twitter account.

On January 7, 2023, Watkins confirmed during a livestream that his pet bulldog had passed away. The incident deeply affected Speed, who became visibly emotional while discussing it with fans. In May, Watkins announced he had signed an exclusive streaming deal with the video-sharing platform Rumble, in collaboration with Kai Cenat. A month later, after many attempts, Watkins met Cristiano Ronaldo in the carpark of Estádio da Luz in Lisbon after Portugal’s 3–0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In August 2023, he hit 20 million subscribers on his YouTube account. On August 16, during a livestream, Watkins jumped up from his seat due to being jumpscared while playing Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach and accidentally flashed his penis to a live viewership of 25,000 people. He subsequently ended and deleted the livestream. Viewers uploaded the clip of the incident onto social media, and the term “IShowMeat,” in reference to the slang word meat, meaning penis, began trending on Reddit and X (Twitter). YouTube declined to strike his channel or ban him from the platform due to the accidental nature of the incident. Later in December 2023, Watkins fought KSI in a charity boxing sparring match after a year-long banter rivalry, raising money for the Anthony Walker Foundation.