Twitch banned Dr Disrespect after seeing messages sent to a minor, former employees say

Twitch abruptly banned one of its biggest stars – Herschel “Guy” Beahm, better known by his Dr Disrespect persona – in 2020 without a word of explanation. Now, four years after Beahm’s permanent ban, two former Twitch employees have come forward to describe events they say contributed to his removal from the platform.

A former Twitch employee, who asked to remain anonymous citing the potential risk to his career, said On the edge that Beahm used Whispers, Twitch’s now-defunct messaging system, to exchange messages with a minor and start a conversation about meeting at TwitchCon. The employee worked on Twitch’s trust and safety team at the time of the ban in 2020.

His comments corroborate a post by Cody Conners, a former Twitch employee who worked on the company’s strategic partnerships team. Late Friday, Conners posted in X, “He was banned because he was caught having sex with a minor on the then-existing Twitch Whispers product. He was trying to meet her at TwitchCon. The powers that be can be read in plain text.

Although Conners did not explicitly mention Beahm by name, it was understood that the streamer was the subject of the post. Beahm’s ban came shortly after Twitch updated its sexual harassment policy to punish offenders with permanent suspensions.

Beahm denied Connors’ allegations. “This was resolved, no irregularities were recognized and they paid the entire contract,” he posted on X. Beahm published an additional post reiterating that no irregularity was found. “I did nothing wrong, this was all investigated and resolved, nothing illegal, no irregularities were found and I was paid,” he wrote.

The news of Beahm’s ban, announced four years ago this week, was shocking. Beahm was one of Twitch’s most popular stars at the time, with around 4 million followers, and had just signed a two-year, seven-figure exclusive contract with the platform. Neither Twitch nor Beahm said why the streamer was banned. In an interview with The Washington Post shortly after the ban, Beahm said that Twitch didn’t even tell him the reason your account was removed.

The former employee who spoke with On the edge also shared more information about the order of events leading up to the ban. They said there was a significant amount of time between when the messages were sent between Beahm and the alleged victim and when the moderation report on those messages was archived, but they could not recall how long. When Twitch received the report in 2020, they said Twitch investigated the allegations and ended up banning Beahm’s channel.

A year after being banned, Beahm said he was suing Twitch for monetary damages and revealed that he finally knew why the platform issued the ban. However, Beahm refused to say what it was. A year later, the dispute was resolved with Beahm saying: “I have resolved my legal dispute with Twitch. Neither party admits any wrongdoing.”

Beahm and Twitch did not respond On the edgerequests for comments.