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Update: Following the recent allegations regarding the reason for Dr Disrespect’s ban from Twitch in 2020 (detailed below), game studio Midnight Society has severed ties with him. “On Friday evening we became aware of an allegation against one of our co-founder’s Guy Beahm aka Dr Disrespect,” the company wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “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.
“For this reason, we are terminating our relationship with Guy Beahm immediately. While these facts are difficult to hear and even more difficult to accept, it is our duty to act with dignity on behalf of all individuals involved, especially the fifty-five developers and families we have employed along with our community of players.”
Midnight Society was co-founded in 2021, in part by Beahm.
Beahm himself has also responded to the allegations, admitting that Twitch Whisper messages “with an individual minor back in 2017” did occur, but denying anything illegal had happened. He also said he plans to return after “an extended vacation.”
Original story: Four years ago, Twitch banned popular streamer Dr Disrespect AKA Herschel “Guy” Beahm from its platform for unknown reasons. According to a new report, Beahm’s ban was allegedly the result of him texting a minor through Twitch’s now-defunct Whispers messaging system and offering to meet up with them at Twitchcon.
A former Twitch employee who asked to remain anonymous when they spoke to The Verge explained that a “significant” amount of time had passed from when Beahm had allegedly sent the messages between himself and the minor, and when the moderation report about the messages was filed.
Possibly linked to the claims are new comments from Cody Conners, another former Twitch employee, who worked in the company’s strategic partnerships team. While Beahm isn’t named in the X/Twitter posts, Conners did write last week “He got banned because [he] 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.”
In response, Beahm wrote “I get it, this is a hot topic, but this has been settled, no wrongdoing was acknowledged, and they paid out the whole contract,” on X. “I didn’t do anything wrong, all this has been probed and settled, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing was found, and I was paid,” Beahm added in a separate post.
At the time, Beahm was one of Twitch’s biggest stars. He had around 4 million subscribers and had just signed a new two-year exclusivity contract with Twitch. His permanent ban came as a big shock at the time, and Beahm claimed that he had no idea why he had been removed from the platform at the time. Beahm then considered legal action against Twitch–revealing that he then knew why he had been banned–but he did not say anything publicly about the situation. A year later, the dispute had been resolved between both parties.
Since then, Beahm moved to YouTube to resume his streaming career and also started a game development studio called Midnight Society.
