Twitch abruptly banned one of its biggest stars, Herschel “Guy” Beahm, best known for his character Dr. Disrespect, in 2020 without a word of explanation. Now, four years after Beahm's permanent ban, two former Twitch employees have come forward to describe the 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 The edge that Beahm had 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. Friday afternoon, Conners x.com/evoli/status/1804309358106546676″>published in x, “He was banned because he was caught texting a minor on the then-existing Twitch whispering product. He was trying to meet her at TwitchCon. “The powers that be could read plain text.”
Although Conners did not explicitly name Beahm, the streamer was understood to be the subject of the post. Beahm's ban came shortly after Twitch updated its sexual harassment policy to punish violators with permanent suspensions.
Beahm denied Connors' allegations. “This was resolved, no crime was recognized and they paid the entire contract.” x.com/DrDisrespect/status/1804337822415097955″>published in x. beahm x.com/DrDisrespect/status/1804577136998776878″>published an additional post reiterating that no irregularity was found. “I did nothing wrong, this has all been investigated and resolved, nothing illegal was found, no crime was found and I was paid,” she wrote.
The news of Beahm's ban, which came to pass 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 exclusivity deal with the platform. Neither Twitch nor Beahm said why the streamer had been banned. In an interview with Washington Post Shortly after the ban, Beahm said that twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_business”>Twitch didn't even tell him the reason why your account had been deleted.
The former employee who spoke with The edge He also shared more information about the order of events that led to the ban. They said there was a significant amount of time between the time the messages were sent between Beahm and the alleged victim and the time the moderation report on those messages was filed, but they could not remember how long. When Twitch received the report in 2020, they said Twitch investigated the claims and ultimately banned Beahm's channel.
One 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 declined to say what that was. A year later, the dispute was resolved, with Beahm saying: “I resolved my legal dispute with Twitch. “Neither party admits to having committed any crime.”
Beahm and Twitch did not respond The edgeRequests for comments.
