Business partners are continuing to ditch Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm after multiple reports corroborated allegations that he “sexted” a minor through Twitch, and the streamer himself admitted to conversations that “sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate” with someone who was underage. The latest such company is YouTube, which has demonetized the DrDisrespect channel which had over 4 million subscribers.
“We have suspended monetization on DrDisrespect’s channel for violating our Creator Responsibility policy,” a spokesperson for YouTube wrote in an email to Kotaku. They confirmed that the video sharing platform has “suspended Dr Disrespect’s channel from the YouTube Partner Program following serious allegations against the creator,” and added that the action applies to any existing channels owned by Beahm and any new ones he might create in the future.
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The decision came nearly a week after a former Twitch employee, Cody Conners, claimed on social media that the real reason Beahm had been permanently banned from Twitch back in 2020 was for sending sexually explicit messages to a minor. That claim has since been corroborated by The Verge, Bloomberg, and Rolling Stone, whose recent report alleged that Beahm continued sending inappropriate messages to the minor even after she told him she was underage. Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s former global head of gaming partnerships, also told Rolling Stone that rumors of Beahm’s inappropriate contact were the reason YouTube never offered him an exclusivity contract.
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Beahm, who eventually moved from Twitch to YouTube where his recent Elden Ring streams have brought in millions of viewers, has since been dropped by the video game studio he cofounded, his sponsor, the gaming headset maker Turtle Beach, his talent agency CAA, NBA2K, where he’s appeared as an in-game character, and the San Francisco 49ers with whom he’d collaborated in the past. Following Bloomberg’s report June 26, Beahm released a statement sharing his “side of the story” in which he confessed to messaging the minor but added “I’m no fucking predator or pedophile.”
“Our Creator Responsibility Guidelines are clear that if a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees, or ecosystem, we may take action to protect our community, including by suspending monetization,” a spokesperson for Google told Kotaku in its email. “While these behaviors are rare, they can cause widespread harm to the YouTube community, and potentially damage the trust among creators, users, and advertisers.”
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Despite suggesting he would leave the internet to go on an indefinite break from streaming earlier this week, Beahm claimed in his statement that he would be back in the future with “a heavy weight off” off his shoulders. “They want me to disappear… yeah fucking right.” If he did end up trying to return to streaming, he would now have to find a new platform to monetize on. In the meantime, even former allies have begun disowning the 2017 Game Awards’ Trending Gamer of the year.
