Joel is clearly becoming disengaged from the whole thing and I imagine him jumping ship
If my Vinesauce timeline is right, he did briefly jump ship around 2014-2015. I could be full of shit - although I've been watching them both since 2011, I stopped from around 2014-2016, so I'm fuzzy on that era - and I don't know why or for how long, but it's interesting to note. Joel is an interesting case in the Vinesauce saga because he was the only one who actually managed to really make a name for himself outside of Vinny. For non-fans who know about Vinesauce, it's always been Vinny, Joel... and the rest! (Sometimes Rev crops up by name, but very rarely.)
It's worth noting that, at this point, the Vinesauce name is just that - a name. Since Twitch became big and made vinesaucevidya obsolete, there has been little community bonding them together, and even less tying the streamers themselves together (they no longer host on the same website; although vinesauce.com still exists, it just links to Twitch). So the only difficult part of removing himself from Vinesauce would be fans' association (he will always be Swedish Vinny, or Joel Vinesauce to a lot of people).
He seems really unwilling to own the image of being a dude who stays in all day and plays videogames for a living.
It's a safe and marketable image. Hard to see the flaw in his logic.
When you are depressed, like, really depressed, that stuff only makes you feel increasingly dead on the inside.
As I and a few others have mentioned, Vinny has been depressed for a long time, at LEAST since 2011. That much is obvious. But it's definitely been getting worse as the years go on, and it's hard not to speculate that his streaming career has a lot to do with it. Streaming is stressful, after all, and Vinny's a private guy - becoming this popular must be a nightmare for him. I'm sure that, even in spite of the money, part of him really misses the Chatango days, as do many of us.
I know Vinny plays more than just cutesy Nintendo games, but he really seems to be drawn back to them regularly since that's what the audience wants. Its possible its already too late and his fanbase is just too childish to support him if he tries to put his foot down. But if he waits a couple more years, I'm pretty sure he's gonna be stuck.
I think he's past that point by now. Vinny's fanbase shifted from primarily old /v/ users to younger Nintendo kids probably around 2016, when he started to become more mainstream. He definitely hates it, and has made it clear that he doesn't think children should be watching his streams, but that doesn't change the facts. If I had to put numbers to it, I'd say the majority of his audience falls within the 15 to 20 range - and for a guy who was already streaming when some of his fans weren't even in school yet, that's a hard thing to reconcile.
The way I see it, he had to choose one way or the other - stick to his old formula and risk alienating the teenagers that made up his new primary audience, or give into their interests in order to keep the cash flow coming. Once again, it's really hard to blame him for choosing the latter. After all, it's not like Old Vinny was particularly "against the grain" - he played the same popular/esoteric games that everyone else did for the sake of the views, and his humor wasn't that much different, just a lot more offensive. So he didn't really lose much.
" cunt to #MeToo him and also even end his side career as a musician. 
