'Deadrop' Game Studio Drops Founder Dr. Disrespect After Alleged Misconduct

Midnight Society, the studio building the first-person shooter game Deadrop, announced Monday that it is dropping co-founder and popular streamer Dr. Disrespect (aka Guy Beahm) following tweeted allegations over why he had been banned from streaming platform Twitch.

The studio tweeted its decision Monday, writing that it began investigating the allegations after it surfaced via social media on Friday.

“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,” the studio’s official account tweeted. “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 55 developers and families we have employed along with our community of players,” it added.

Beahm, who’s known for donning a wig and sunglasses and streaming in character as a macho action star of sorts, was banned from the Amazon-owned video game streaming platform Twitch in 2020. Twitch wouldn’t specify when Beahm had been booted from the platform, but said in a statement that it was due to violations of its community guidelines.

He sued the platform in 2021 for breaking his exclusive contract with the streamer, and in 2022, they settled the matter with neither side admitting wrongdoing. But last week, former Twitch employee Cody Conners alleged that a user had been banned for sexual misconduct, without specifically naming the person in question.

The allegations were broadly assumed to be about Beahm, and swept across the gaming space over the weekend, with some industry members saying they’d heard similar accusations in the past but could not corroborate them. Beahm then tweeted a statement on Saturday.

“Listen, I’m obviously tied to legal obligations from the settlement with Twitch, but I just need to say what I can say since this is the fucking internet,” Beahm wrote. “I didn’t do anything wrong, all this has been probed and settled, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing was found, and I was paid.”

His Midnight Society co-founders appear to disagree that there was no wrongdoing, however, and have punted him from the studio. During a stream today, Beahm appeared to react to some kind of news, and then said he was feeling “burnt out” on streaming and suggested he might step away for an extended period of time.

Decrypt’s GG reached out to representatives for both Midnight Society and Dr. Disrespect, but did not immediately hear back from either side.

Deadrop is an extraction-style PC shooter that was originally launched via the sale of NFTs on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, which served as both profile pictures and access passes to the in-development game. Midnight Society has yet to implement any other blockchain elements within Deadrop over the course of multiple large feature updates.

Edited by Guillermo Jimenez