Popular YouTube streamer Herschel “Guy” Beahm IV—better known as Dr Disrespect—has been dropped from the company he helped found, Midnight Society, and longtime sponsor Turtle Beach appears to be removing any reference to the popular streamer, following multiple reports that he allegedly had sexualized conversations with an underage girl while still on Twitch in 2020.
The Verge and Bloomberg report, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the situation, claim that Beahm’s account was suspended and he was later pushed out of Twitch (and chat program Discord) due to allegedly engaging in inappropriate private DMs of a sexual nature with a minor on the platform. The story resurfaced on Friday when former Twitch employee Cody Conners alleged on Twitter:
“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.“
On Monday Dead Drop game developer Midnight Society announced that it had parted ways with Beahm:
On Friday evening we became aware of an allegation against one of our co-founder’s Guy Beahm aka Dr Disrespect.
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 Studio Head Robert Bowling (a former employee of original Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward—which became Respawn and develops Apex Legends) added on social media Tuesday:
“This is a statement from me personally. It does not reflect any of my companies and has not gone through any legal or PR approvals. If you inappropriately message a minor. I can not work with you. Period. I promised to only act on facts, and I did.”
For his part, Beahm said on stream this week that he would be taking a break from streaming for a while; earlier he said that he had nothing more to say about the situation—though over the week he noted that he was cleared of wrongdoing and the matter was taken care of as part of a settlement with Twitch.
But on Tuesday Beahm put out a lengthy statement explaining the situation as he sees it, admitting that while he may have had inappropriate conversations with a minor, those conversations did not rise to the level that some people are alleging:
THE TWITCH BAN
Hello, I’d like to make a quick statement..
Lets cut the fucking bullshit, as you know there’s no filter with me. I’ve always been up front and real with you guys on anything that I can be up front about, and I’m always willing to accept responsibility… which…
— Dr Disrespect (@DrDisrespect) June 25, 2024