Update June 26th 8:08AM: Dr. Disrespect has issued a statement in response to the below allegations, confirming that they are essentially accurate but condemning the "destruction zone" of social media.
In his statement, Dr. Disrespect says that there were "Twitch Whisper messages with an individual minor back in 2017", but that there were no "real intentions" behind these messages. Once again, he reiterates that "nothing illegal happened" and that no criminal charges were introduced.
He does, however, acknowledge that the messages "sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate", and that "as an adult, a husband, and a father", he takes "responsibility" from a "moral standpoint".
Reporter Paul Tassi points out that the message was edited to remove the word "minor", then re-edited to include the word once again. The edit history of the message can be seen here, confirming that this is indeed the case. Original story follows below.
Original story: Streamer and Midnight Society co-founder Dr. Disrespect has been fired from his studio following an investigation into allegations that he sexted a minor.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Midnight Society says it became aware of allegations against Dr. Disrespect, real name Guy Beahm, on Friday evening. Beahm is one of the studio's co-founders, having set up Midnight Society alongside other heads back in 2021.
The studio says it presumed his innocence at first, but after speaking with "parties involved" with the allegations, Midnight Society "needed to act", hence the termination of its relationship with Beahm, effective "immediately".
Midnight Society goes on to say that details of the allegations are "difficult to hear and even more difficult to accept", but that it's the studio's "duty" to act "with dignity" on behalf of everyone involved.
These allegations emerged a few days ago thanks to former Twitch employee Cody Conners, who claimed Dr. Disrespect was banned from Twitch in 2020 because "he got caught sexting a minor".
Conners says Beahm was trying to meet up with the person in question at TwitchCon, but that Twitch shut the interaction down and banned Beahm from their platform.
His comments were corroborated by a second former employee, who told The Verge that Beahm had used Twitch's messaging system to initiate the exchange.
Subsequently, esports news writer Jake Lucky picked up Conners' post and reported on it on X, prompting a response from Beahm in which he told Lucky that "no wrongdoing was acknowledged" and that the matter was "settled".
Beahm followed up this statement with another one in which he claimed he's "obviously tied to legal obligations from the settlement with Twitch", but that he "didn't do anything wrong", reiterating once again that "no wrongdoing was found".
Following this, Dr. Disrespect streamed himself playing the recently-released Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, with Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach noting that Beahm's mood "took a noticeable turn" after he checked his phone during the stream (the implication seemingly being that he's just seen Midnight Society's announcement).
He also goes on to say that he's "stepping away" from streaming, and that he will "completely remove" himself from Midnight Society.
As for the studio itself, we're not sure what comes next, nor do we know whether this move will impact the development of "vertical extraction shooter" Deadrop. Watch this space for more info.