Dr DisRespect Announces Return to Streaming on YouTube
Dr DisRespect has announced his return to streaming on YouTube. Here are the details!
In an Instagram story, popular live streamer Guy Beahm, better known as Dr DisRespect, announced that he would return to streaming “as early as today.” Beahm’s return comes more than a month after the streamer was permanently banned from Twitch for reasons that remain a mystery.
After going live on YouTube with a pre-recorded broadcast teasing his return, Beahm officially confirmed on Twitter that he’ll be streaming on the platform starting Aug. 7, saying “Tomorrow, we arrive.”
His initial Instagram story was followed by hours of speculation about whether the streamer would make his return on YouTube. Rumors intensified when both esports industry insider Rod Breslau, who has been reporting on the story of Beahm’s banning since June, and eagle-eyed DisRespect watchdog Twitter handle “Detective Disespect” discovered that Beahm had added a “Join” button to his YouTube channel, where viewers can sign up for “membership perks” for $4.99 a month.
While Detective Disrespect suggested that the new “Join” button meant that Beahm has been accepted into YouTube’s Partners Program, Breslau refuted this, saying that, “Sources at Facebook Gaming and YouTube tell me DrDisrespect has not and will not be offered a partnership with either company at this time, but is free to go live just as any other creator would.”
To stoke the YouTube rumors, Beahm also released a new music video titled “Red Skies” on the platform with the tag “comeback,” per streaming industry insider Zach Bussey. Watch the video below:
Beahm confirmed to PC Gamer in July that he was planning his return to live streaming on another platform. The outlet said that Beahm was “considering streaming independently on his championsclub.gg website [the official site of his fan club and merch store], in addition to other big options like YouTube and Facebook.”
At the time of writing, neither Beahm nor YouTube have made an official announcement about a potential partnership. One thing that is for certain is that Beahm’s fans have been waiting anxiously for the streamer’s return as well as answers regarding his mysterious disappearance from Twitch.
Since the ban went into effect on June 28, Twitch has yet to offer a concrete reason why Beahm was booted from the platform beyond a general statement on the matter.
“As is our process, we take appropriate action when we have evidence that a streamer has acted in violation of our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service,” Twitch said at the time. “These apply to all streamers regardless of status or prominence in the community.”
Many theories have been posted online and spread on Twitter, Reddit, and other forums. Some, like a 4chan rumor that Beahm had left Twitch to start a new streaming platform called Brime, were debunked. Other rumors and reports, including one by Breslau which points to a more serious reason behind Beahm’s Twitch ban, have yet to be proven true or false.
Beahm declined to comment on any specific theories or rumors in his first interview since his Twitch ban. He told The Washington Post in July that he has yet to hear why he was banned and that he’d only learned of the ban after it was mentioned in somebody else’s stream. When he reached out to Twitch, the platform confirmed that he’d been suspended but would not give a reason behind the action. We also learned from his interview with PC Gamer that Twitch cut off all contact with the streamer and that Beahm was done with the streaming platform for good.
“Yeah, that’s the kind of the mind-blowing thing about all of this,” Beahm told PC Gamer, also revealing that he was considering legal action against Twitch. “Obviously, for legal counsel, I have to be careful here. But I can say however, that I will not be returning to Twitch, so, I mean, that’s it.”
The ban came just months after Beahm signed a multi-year exclusivity deal with Twitch, locking him into the platform at a time when other popular streamers like Ninja and Shroud had been poached by Microsoft for its own Mixer streaming service, which was recently shut down. Beahm confirmed to The Washington Post that Twitch had voided his contract. The streamer had stood to earn $10 million per year from the deal, according to Kotaku.
Dr DisRespect’s return on YouTube comes just a day after Ninja (real name: Richard Tyler Blevins) made his comeback on Twitch, making Twitch Affiliate during his very first stream, which had almost 100,000 viewers in the first 15 minutes of the broadcast, according to The Verge. Beahm’s teaser stream on YouTube peaked at over 330,000 viewers at one point, with many of them joining his new membership or tipping the streamer.
We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.
Written by
John Saavedra is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Den of Geek. He lives in New York City with his two cats.