Games

Celebrity streamer insists that "I didn't do anything wrong"

Deadrop developers Midnight Society have "terminated" their relationship with studio co-founder and celebrity streamer Herschel "Guy" Beahm, aka "Dr Disrespect", over fresh allegations about the reasons for his infamous Twitch ban in 2020.

At the time of the ban, which came just a few months after Beahm and Twitch announced a two-year exclusivity contract, Twitch commented only that Beahm had been jettisoned for acting "in violation of our Community Guidelines". Beahm himself described the move as "a total shock" in a later conversation with the Washington Post. In August 2021, he took Twitch to court over the ban, but the dispute was eventually settled with neither party admitting any wrongdoing.

Last week, however, former Twitch strategic partnerships account director Cody Conners alleged in a Xitter post that an unnamed person "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. Case closed, gang." (Twitch Whispers is a now-retired private 1-to-1 messaging service.) According to two anonymous former Twitch employees cited by the Verge in a subsequent investigation - one of whom worked on Twitch's trust and safety team at the time of the ban - the unnamed person in question was Beahm.

Beahm hasn't yet addressed these latest claims about his behaviour, beyond tweeting last week that "Listen, I'm obviously tied to legal obligations from the settlement with Twitch but I just need to say what I can say since this is the fucking internet. I didn't do anything wrong, all this has been probed and settled, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing was found, and I was paid."