Dr Disrespect (aka Guy Beahm) has been booted by his own game development studio after it was revealed that his Twitch permaban stemmed from him using the platform’s DM system to message a minor.
Speculation over the cause of Beahm’s 2020 permaban has been rampant for years, with some people thinking it might be because of the 2019 incident where he filmed in a bathroom at E3, and others suspecting he was being punished for trying to create a Twitch competitor. Rumors reignited in 2022, after Beahm “[sued] the fuck” out of Twitch and settled for an undisclosed amount of money.
But Twitch has a policy of not commenting on reasons for bans (even going so far as to not tell streamers themselves why they’re banned), and Beahm wouldn’t confirm what had happened, so there was no way of knowing why Twitch had cut ties with one of its most prominent streamers.
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Until June 21, when former Twitch employee Cody Conners tweeted, “He got banned because got caught sexting a minor in the then existing Twitch whispers product. He was trying to meet up with her at TwitchCon. The powers that be could read in plain text.”
No one made the wrong decision, fuck him and his boys.
— Cody Conners (@evoli) June 22, 2024
Not long after that tweet, Midnight Society, which Beahm founded in 2021 and which is developing its first title Deadrop, confirmed it had cut ties with him. “We assumed his innocence and began speaking with parties involved. And in order to maintain our principles and standards as a studio and individuals, we needed to act,” the studio tweeted. “For this reason, we are terminating our relationship with Guy Beahm immediately.”
The studio hasn’t said anything yet, but it appears Deadrop will continue developing Deadrop without Beahm.
Beahm eventually took to Twitter himself and confirmed what Conners had said was true: he was banned for DMing a minor.
“Were there twitch whisper messages with an individual minor back in 2017? The answer is yes. Were there real intentions behind these messages, the answer is absolutely not. These were casual, mutual conversations that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate, but nothing more,” he wrote. “Nothing illegal happened, no pictures were shared, no crimes were committed, I never even met the individual.”
He added, “Now, from a moral standpoint I’ll absolutely take responsibility. I should have never entertained these conversations to begin with. That’s on me. That’s on me as an adult, a husband and a father. It should have never happened. I get it. I’m not perfect and I’ll fucking own my shit. This was stupid.”
Beahm went on to say he’s currently taking an “extended vacation” from stream, “and I’m coming back with a heavy weight off my shoulders.”
It’s not surprising he wants to be off camera for a while, considering he appeared to have been live the moment he heard Midnight Society was dropping him:
You can see the exact moment Dr Disrespect appears to find out that Midnight Society is dropping him, or some other seemingly bad news related to his Twitch ban allegations.
He had just defeated Bayle The Dread and went to look at his phone after fast travelling to Scadu Atlus pic.twitter.com/CwgPSVYCXc
— AmericanTruckSongs9 (@ethangach) June 24, 2024
He was also live back in 2020 when he was informed of the Twitch ban, and his reaction to that news was caught on camera, too.
A source familiar with the matter told The Verge Beahm was found out because a moderation report was filed on the DMs with the minor “a significant amount of time” later. Twitch appears to have banned Beahm swiftly after the report was filed.
Twitch has not publicly commented on the situation; if it does, we’ll update this story with any new info.
