Four years later Famous gamer and streaming star Dr Disrespect, 42, was banned from Twitch for undisclosed reasons, reports emerged this week that he had allegedly used the Amazon-owned platform's instant messaging feature to send sexually explicit texts to a minor. Now, the inside answer to these alleged conversations – long the subject of rumor and speculation – is finally coming to light.
In June 2020, there was a #MeToo reckoning in the gaming community, with dozens in the industry leveled more than 70 complaints for sexually harassing and assaulting high-profile streamers, esports broadcasters and game developers. Twitch responded to the outcry on June 21, 2020, promising to take strong and immediate action against credible allegations against their creators. “We take allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct extremely seriously,” the company said in a statement. statement. “We are actively investigating accounts involving Twitch-affiliated streamers and will cooperate with law enforcement where appropriate.”
Guy Beahm, aka Dr Disrespect, a flamboyant gaming personality and one of the most popular creators on Twitch, with 4 million followers at the time, was permanently prohibited from the platform five days later. Known for playing battle royale shoot-em-up games as a sort of alpha jock wearing a thick mustache and mullet wig, he had signed a major multi-year agreement with the company in March. Commenting on his lifetime ban, Twitch only confirmed that he had violated community guidelines. Soon after, Discord cut him from their partnership program, which is reserved for the most active and popular server communities. Beahm went on to sue Twitch for financial and reputational losses and arranged with the company in 2022. Neither party has admitted any wrongdoing, and the details of that legal deal remain unclear.
Meanwhile, the reason for the ban remained a mystery, prompting years of innuendo, conspiracy theories, and questions about why neither Twitch nor gaming journalists were able to reveal the nature of Beahm's violation. (Full disclosure: the lead author of this article, Rod Breslau, first learned the reason about Beahm's ban from reliable sources in June 2020, but chose not to report on it at the time due to the extreme sensitivity of the matter.)
The gossip reached a fever pitch Friday when former Twitch employee Cody Conners—without naming Beahm— he tweeted which many interpreted as an explanation of why he had been excluded. Beahm denied any wrongdoing in a tweet the next day. “I did nothing wrong, this has all been investigated and settled, 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 rock learned that Beahm was kicked off the platform in 2020 for allegedly having sex with a minor through a since-discontinued messaging feature called Whispers, even after learning she was a minor. He also reportedly asked about her plans to attend TwitchCon, the company's biannual gaming convention.
On Monday, Beahm was fired from Midnight Society, the gaming studio he co-founded, which he said had investigated the allegation against him after learning of it the night of Conners' cryptic tweet. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.) Then, on Tuesday, it was reported by the Lip's Ash Parrish and BloombergCecilia D'Anastasio matched the details of Beahm's case with Conners' account. Three sources confirmed Bloomberg that Beahm had been banned from the site for sending sexually explicit direct messages to a minor. Two of those sources also confirmed that Beahm had asked her about plans for the upcoming TwitchCon.
Beahm, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, once again took to Twitter to defend himself, this time with a longer statement in which he admitted that he “had mutual conversations with a minor that some sometimes it leaned too far in the direction of being inappropriate.” (The tweet is processing history shows that Beahm had edited the tweet after posting it to remove the word “minor,” replacing it with “individual,” though once readers noticed this changethe word “minor” reappeared.)
“Nothing illegal happened, no photos were shared, no crimes were committed, I never met the person,” Beahm claimed. “I went through a lengthy arbitration regarding a civil dispute with Twitch and this case was resolved with a settlement… But trust me when I say this… to all my living and breathing haters [sic] social media with zero real life experience, I'm not thinking of you. They want me to disappear… yeah, right.” (Beahm did not respond to Rolling Stone's request for comment.)
A former Twitch Trust and Security employee who worked for the platform at the time Beahm was banned and has direct knowledge of the matter confirmed to Rolling rock that Beahm continued to send sexually suggestive messages to a minor he knew to be a minor. That former employee, who requested anonymity so his career wouldn't be jeopardized, also said critical elements of Beahm's latest defensive tweet are inaccurate.
“I remember that Dr. Disrespect was informed by the person that they were underage during the conversation, after which they said it was no problem and moved on,” says the former employee. “There was no confusion. The messages sent after admitting this were no less graphic and sexually explicit than before, and I think more so than the categorization of 'I'm leaning too far towards being inappropriate' might suggest. ».
The former Twitch employee has also provided Rolling rock a more detailed description of the internal conversations on Twitch after Beahm's messages were reported 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 got the ball rolling. I and many of my former colleagues feel comfortable talking now because of this. Our priority is always their safety [alleged] victim and to keep their identity secret,” they said.
As some streamers faced a flood of sexual harassment complaints in June 2020, Twitch created an incident response team codenamed “Gold Sparrow” to develop a process to investigate and act on reports as a unit, it says the former employee. “We wanted to be able to process investigations faster and with more resources, while providing as much support as possible to victims,” says the former employee. (Twitch did not comment by press time.)
When the initial report of Beahm's alleged inappropriate messages came out in 2020, an investigation was launched. “After viewing the contents of the Whisper chat, it quickly became clear the brutality of the behavior and the actions that Twitch needs to take,” says the former employee. “The decision to permanently terminate Beahm was relatively quick, given the seriousness of the conduct.”
Twitch cannot and will not release the alleged messages, the former employee says, as doing so “not only puts the victim and law enforcement investigations at risk.”
In early 2021, Twitch's trust and security team created OSIT, an investigative team for reports of off-site misconduct by creators. At that time, the company is described the initiative 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 on off-duty misconduct was not clear enough.” Among the alleged off-site behavior it pledged to investigate was the sexual exploitation of children, including child grooming.
Following Beahm's Twitch ban and time out of the spotlight, he announced a return to flow on YouTube in August 2020. However, while he was free to use both that platform and Facebook Gaming, No one offered him an exclusive partnership. The lack of a streaming contract was notable for a celebrity in the industry at a time when other streamers like it Valkyries, Ludwig Ahgrenand TimTheTatman they were signing seven-figure, multi-year deals.
YouTube's former head of global gaming partnerships at Google, Ryan Wyatt, confirmed Rolling rock that Beahm was not offered a contract due to chatter about the circumstances of the Twitch ban. He says a Twitch employee and reporters investigating the incident told YouTube officials that it involved inappropriate messages to a minor.
“The unfortunate part of all of this was that there were so many rumors going around in the industry, one that a minor was involved,” he says. “But no one provided first-hand knowledge or evidence, and because of these rumours, there was no reason to entertain any deal with [Beahm]and no evidence means you can't act on one [terms of service] violation. The whole situation got even more confusing when Twitch came clean and basically said, “no wrongdoing,” which caused everyone in the industry to dismiss the rumors, but still, there was never any reason to make a deal with him after that ban. ».
A representative for CAA, Beahm's talent agency since he signed in 2019, tells Rolling Stone that he is no longer a client and hasn't been for some time. Several high profile streamers including Kai Cenat, Codemiko and Valkyrae have doomed Beahm in recent days. The San Francisco 49ers, for whom he had played a few times in a promotional role, announced that he was cutting ties with him, while the video game franchise NBA 2K he said he would remove his character from the queue.
“To this day I am still humbled by that experience,” says the former Twitch employee who was at the company when it mobilized to address allegations of misconduct by Beahm and others in the summer of 2020. “The bravery of the victims who spoke out and the commitment of my colleagues to do right by them. I hope we're all on a better path now for that.”
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