More than a month after famed gaming influencer Dr. Disrespect was dropped by Midnight Society, the studio building the first-person shooter Deadrop, the team has broken its silence in an exclusive interview with Decrypt’s GG—to discuss removing the popular streamer from the company, and how the game can move forward without him.
Dr. Disrespect, aka Guy Beahm, was alleged to have inappropriately chatted with a minor. The streamer later admitted to having conversations with a minor that “leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate,” but denied any illegal actions.
As the four founders of Deadrop (including Beahm) “caught wind” of these allegations, the group began a series of calls where they discussed the situation with the streamer, co-founder and creative director Quinn DelHoyo told Decrypt’s GG.
"He talked to us about what was going on," DelHoyo explained to Decrypt, and they collectively realized that the professional relationship was untenable. “All four of us, we amicably decided this is what’s best for Midnight Society. And we wish Guy nothing but the best for his future endeavors.”
As a result, Midnight Society put out a statement explaining that the studio had “terminated” its relationship with Dr. Disrespect, one of its co-founders.
The announcement received mixed reactions, particularly as it came ahead of his own admission to the contact with the minor. Many gamers praised the move to distance the team and game from Dr. Disrespect amid the controversy, while others suggested the move would kill Deadrop given its close association with the influencer.
“It was tough, it was sad, but it was the right decision,” DelHoyo said, going on to note the perspectives of his co-founders Robert Bowling and Sumit Gupta. “My number one thing, Rob’s number one thing, Sumit’s number one thing, and even Guy’s number one thing was: How do we protect the studio?”
Dr. Disrespect held a unique role within the company. As an influencer with over 4.5 million subscribers on YouTube, his main responsibility was bringing new eyeballs to the game. He’d done that, but his sizable profile proved to be a double-edged sword once the allegations came to light.
“He was an instant injection of a fan base interested in our studio and our game. And he was heavily involved in the marketing side of things,” DelHoyo said. But when it came to the design and development of the game, DelHoyo said that Beahm was fairly hands-off, despite Beahm’s own history as a Call of Duty game developer before his pivot to a streaming personality.
“We haven't skipped a beat in that manner, because we've been the ones doing it the entire time,” said DelHoyo of Deadrop’s ongoing game design.
Following the controversy and the dismissal of Dr. Disrespect, Midnight Society is looking to ramp up the speed of Deadrop updates while pushing out more social media activity—in hopes that the strength of the game will push the project forward.
In recent weeks, owners of the Founders Access Pass NFT—which originally sold for $50 apiece on Ethereum scaling network Polygon back in November 2022—have received a weekend update with fresh changes and updates to the game. This comes after the studio slowed down its rate of updates over the past year.
Until the end of August, DelHoyo said that Midnight Society will be “cramming in” all of Deadrop’s major features. That’s so that the studio can polish these elements across September and October before launching the game in a broader “early access” state in November.
One major feature that will come in November will be the evolution of the hideout—currently a regular menu where players sit while waiting for a match and looking at their loot. With this update, the hideout will become an explorable 3D space as was originally teased in the game’s first build back in 2022.
Soon man. We're testing console builds now.
If you're new here and you're like "wait, why does this look shitty?"
It's because we're testing new movement abilities and combat balancing in a placeholder map and mode with our community.
We don't bother arting temp spaces. https://t.co/I1UC5VtleH
— DEADROP (@DEADROP) July 25, 2024
“Our plan is to ship the fully featured game in fall of 2025,” DelHoyo added.
Deadrop is a first-person extraction shooter that places a strong emphasis on vertical map design, giving the game a distinct feel. Maps that are added to the game all connect to the broader Deadrop world, which is what DelHoyo is eager to reveal to fans of the game.
“What I'm most excited about is giving our players and letting them see more of what we're planning in this giant tower, this megastructure that we call the Refiner State,” DelHoyo told Decrypt. “There's going to be a bunch of maps within that, and we're going to be adding more over time. Over the course of the next year, that's what excites me the most.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward