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Four years after gaming celebrity and streaming star Dr Disrespect, 42, was banned from Twitch for undisclosed reasons, reports emerged this week that he allegedly used the platform’s direct messaging feature belonging to Amazon to send sexually explicit texts to a minor. Today, the internal response to these alleged conversations – long the subject of rumor and speculation – is finally revealed.
In June 2020, there was a #MeToo reckoning within the gaming community, with dozens of people in the industry coming forward with over 70 allegations of sexual misconduct and assault against high-profile streamers, esports broadcasters, and game developers. Twitch responded to the outcry on June 21, 2020, vowing to take strong and immediate action against credible allegations against its creators. “We take allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct extremely seriously,” the company said in a statement. “We are actively investigating accounts involving Twitch-affiliated streamers and will work with law enforcement as appropriate.”
Guy Beahm, aka Dr Disrespect, a flamboyant gaming personality and one of Twitch’s most popular creators, with 4 million followers at the time, was permanently banned from the platform five days later. Known for playing battle royale shooters as a sort of alpha jockey sporting a thick mustache and mullet, he had signed a major multi-year contract with the company in March of that year. Commenting on his lifetime ban, Twitch only confirmed that he had violated its community guidelines. Shortly after, Discord released him from its Partner Program, reserved for the most active and popular server communities. Beahm subsequently sued Twitch for financial and reputational damage, and reached a settlement with the company in 2022. Neither party has admitted wrongdoing, and the details of that legal agreement remain unclear.
Meanwhile, the cause of the ban remained a mystery, sparking years of innuendo, conspiracy theories, and questions about why neither Twitch nor gaming journalists had been able to reveal the nature of Beahm’s violation. (Full disclosure: The lead author of this article, Rod Breslau, first learned of the reason for Beahm’s ban from credible sources in June 2020, but chose not to discuss it at that time due to the extreme sensitivity of the subject.)
The rumors came to a head on Friday, when former Twitch employee Cody Conners – without naming Beahm – tweeted what many interpreted as an explanation for why he was banned. Beahm denied any wrongdoing in a tweet the following day. “I did nothing wrong, this was all investigated and resolved, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing found,” he wrote. But after independently reviewing Twitch’s internal communications and interviewing a source with knowledge of the situation, Rolling stone learned that Beahm was kicked off the platform in 2020 for allegedly texting a minor through a since-discontinued messaging feature called Whispers, even after learning she was underage. He also reportedly inquired about plans to attend TwitchCon, the company’s biannual gaming convention.
On Monday, Beahm was fired from Midnight Society, the game studio he co-founded, which said it investigated the allegations against him after learning of them the night of Conners’ cryptic tweet. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.) Then, on Tuesday, a report from EdgeAsh Parrish and BloombergCecilia D’Anastasio matched details of Beahm’s case with Conners’ account. Three sources confirmed Bloomberg that Beahm had been kicked off the site for sending direct messages to a minor containing sexually graphic details. Two of those sources also confirmed that Beahm had asked him about plans for the upcoming TwitchCon.
Beahm, who did not respond to a request for comment on this story, took to Twitter again to defend himself, this time with a longer statement in which he admitted to “having mutual conversations with a minor which sometimes leaned too far in the direction of being inappropriate. (The tweet’s edit history shows that Beahm had edited the tweet after posting it to remove the word “minor”, replacing it with “individual”, although once readers noticed this change, the word “minor” reappeared.)
“Nothing illegal happened, no photos were shared, no crimes were committed, I never even met the individual,” Beahm said. “I went through a lengthy arbitration regarding a civil dispute with Twitch and this matter was resolved with a settlement… But believe me when I say this… to all my haters who live and breathe (sic) social media with no experience in real life, I don’t care about you. They want me to disappear…yeah, fuck, that’s true. (Beahm did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)
A former Twitch trust and safety employee who worked for the platform at the time Beahm was banned and has direct knowledge of the matter confirmed to Rolling stone that Beahm continued to send sexually graphic messages to a minor he knew to be a minor. This former employee, who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his career, also said that crucial elements of Beahm’s latest defensive tweet were inaccurate.
“I recall that Dr. Disrespect was informed by the individual that he was a minor during the conversation, after which he indicated that it was not an issue and moved on,” the former employee said. “There was no confusion. The messages sent after the individual acknowledged this were no less explicit and sexually explicit than before, and I believe they were more than what the categorization of ‘leaning too far toward inappropriate’ would indicate.”
The former Twitch employee also provided rolling stone A more detailed account of internal conversations at Twitch following the reporting of Beahm’s posts and his subsequent ban. They say the details of Beahm’s case are coming to light because of Conners’ explosive tweet last week. “Cody definitely stirred things up. I and many of my former colleagues are only comfortable speaking out now because of that. Our priority is always the safety of the (alleged) victim and keeping their identity a secret,” they said.
As some of its streamers faced a flood of sexual misconduct allegations in June 2020, Twitch created an incident response team named “Gold Sparrow” to develop a process to investigate and take action on reports as a unit, the former employee said. “We wanted to be able to handle growing investigations faster and with more resources while providing as much support to victims as possible,” says the former employee. (Twitch did not provide comment at the time of publication.)
When the first report of Beahm’s alleged inappropriate messages emerged in 2020, an investigation began. “After viewing the content of the Whisper conversation, it quickly became clear that the conduct was serious and that Twitch needed to take action,” the former employee said. “The decision to permanently terminate Beahm was relatively quick, due to the seriousness of the behavior.”
Twitch cannot and will not make the alleged messages public, the former employee says, because doing so “not only endangers the victim and law enforcement investigations.”
In early 2021, Twitch’s Trust and Safety team created OSIT, an investigative team tasked with detecting reports of off-site misconduct by creators. At the time, the company described the move as a direct response to “allegations of sexual misconduct that surfaced in the gaming industry over the summer.” In evaluating these allegations, the company said it “realized that our current policy regarding off-site misconduct is not sufficiently clear.” Among the alleged off-site behavior she pledged to investigate was child sexual exploitation, including child grooming.
Following his ban from Twitch and subsequent retreat from the spotlight, Beahm announced his return to streaming on YouTube in August 2020. But while he was free to use both that platform and Facebook Gaming, neither offered him an exclusive partnership. His lack of a streaming deal was notable for an industry celebrity at a time when other streamers like Valkyrae, Ludwig Ahgren, and TimTheTatman were signing multi-year, seven-figure deals.
Former Google head of YouTube’s global gaming partnerships Ryan Wyatt confirmed Rolling stone that Beahm was not offered a contract due to discussions about the circumstances of his Twitch ban. He claims that a Twitch employee and journalists investigating the incident told YouTube employees that the messages were inappropriate and were directed at a minor.
“The unfortunate thing about all of this was that there were so many rumors circulating in the industry, including that a minor was involved,” he says. “But no one has provided first-hand evidence, and because of these rumors, there was no reason to consider making a deal with (Beahm), and the lack of evidence means you can’t not act in the event of a violation (of the conditions of use). The situation became even more confusing when Twitch made a deal and effectively declared “no wrongdoing”, which caused everyone in the industry to dismiss the rumors, but even so, there was never reason to conclude an agreement with him after this banishment. »
A spokesperson for CAA, Beahm’s talent agency since he signed in 2019, told Rolling Stone that he has not been a client for some time. Several high-profile streamers, including Kai Cenat, Codemiko, and Valkyrae, have condemned Beahm in recent days. The San Francisco 49ers, for whom he had at times played a promotional role, announced they were cutting ties with him, while the video game franchise NBA 2K said it would remove his character from the show.
“I am still humbled by this experience to this day,” says former Twitch employee who was at the company when it mobilized to respond to reports of misconduct by Beahm and others in the summer of 2020. “The courage of the victims who spoke out and the commitment of my colleagues to do what is necessary to help them. I hope we are all on the right track now. »