San Francisco 49ers have cut ties with a popular video game streamer who admitted Tuesday to inappropriately messaging a minor in 2017. The streamer, Herschel “Guy” Beahm, known by his username Dr Disrespect, was banned by Twitch in 2020.
“We take these developments seriously and will not be working with him going forward,” a 49ers spokesperson told SFGATE.
Beahm is a 42-year-old video game streamer who broadcasts to tens of thousands of viewers on YouTube. From 2022 to 2023, Beahm, a longtime fan of the Niners, developed a closer relationship with the football team, which included appearing in social media posts and representing the team on a couple of high-profile occasions. He announced San Francisco’s third-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft and starred in a video introduction for a “Sunday Night Football” matchup later that year between the Niners and Broncos that aired on NBC. Beahm even set off the ceremonial foghorn ahead of the 49ers’ wild-card matchup against the Seahawks on Jan. 14, 2023.
Beahm had exclusively streamed on Twitch until he was mysteriously banned from the platform in 2020. The reason behind the ban wasn’t publicly clear — until a former Twitch employee posted allegations on social media last Friday that it was because Beahm had sent sexually explicit messages to a minor through the site’s personal message system. When a video game content aggregator shared the post, Beahm replied on X, “I get it, its a hot topic but this has been settled, no wrongdoing was acknowledged and they paid out the whole contract.”
On Saturday, Beahm reiterated, “I didn’t do anything wrong, all this has been probed and settled, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing was found, and I was paid.” He ended the post with, “Elden Ring Monday,” an indication that he planned to continue his streaming schedule as normal. Two days after that statement, Midnight Society, a gaming studio Beahm co-founded, terminated its relationship with him. The studio’s statement read, “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.”
On Friday evening we became aware of an allegation against one of our co-founder’s Guy Beahm aka Dr Disrespect.
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.
Beahm himself acknowledged for the first time publicly Tuesday that he had messaged “an individual minor” through Twitch’s personal messaging system in 2017. He said he had engaged in “mutual conversations that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate” and further confirmed that this is what got him banned from Twitch, as well as cost him other sponsorships. (A year after the ban, Beahm had threatened to sue Twitch but ultimately agreed to an undisclosed settlement with the site in March 2022.)
Cecilia D’Anastasio of Bloomberg reported Tuesday that “three people with knowledge of the matter” confirmed the allegations of Beahm’s inappropriate messages. Two of those sources also said he asked about her plans at TwitchCon. Beahm posted his nearly 650-word comment on X a couple of hours after the story was published.
“Nothing illegal happened, no pictures were shared, no crimes were committed, I never even met the individual,” Beahm wrote in his Tuesday post. “I went through a lengthy arbitration regarding a civil dispute with twitch and that case was resolved by a settlement. Let me be clear, it was not a criminal case against me and no criminal charges have ever been brought against me.”
He added, “I’m no f—king predator or pedophile. Are you kidding me? Anyone that truely knows me f—king knows where I stand on those things with those types of people.” Finally, he declared: “They want me to disappear… yeah f—king right.”
