The years-long saga of Dr. Disrespect took several significant turns in the last 24 hours, and may in fact be coming to an end. An end which sees the streamer essentially back where he was before this all started, and before he admitted that the reason he was banned on Twitch four years earlier was inappropriately messaging a minor.
After that now-deleted admission that he eventually said was “bait” for journalists, Doc was demonetized by YouTube, his main streaming platform, and when he returned from a break, was rejected from re-monetization. But now, after re-applying, that’s been reversed and he is free to stream and earn on the platform once more.
Separately, on the very same day, Midnight Society, the studio Doc founded with others like former Infinity Ward higher-up Robert Bowling, announced it was closing, ceasing development on the extraction shooter they were once making with Doc, DEADROP, causing 55 people to lose their jobs. The studio immediately fired Dr. Disrespect and removed all his imagery from the game as soon as they confirmed the reason for his ban. But without him and his fanbase, it was hard to imagine the already risky project having a chance. And now it’s gone, and dozens of people have lost their jobs.
As a refresher, here is what Doc said in a statement about his 2020 ban as all this was unfolding back in June of 2024:
“Were there twitch whisper messages with an individual minor back in 2017? The answer is yes. Were there real intentions behind these messages, the answer is absolutely not. These were casual, mutual conversations that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate, but nothing more. Nothing illegal happened, no pictures were shared, no crimes were committed.”
But ever since his return, Dr. Disrespect seems to have only lost a fraction of his loyal audience, often streaming to ~20,000 concurrent viewers, and two months ago secured a big deal with “anti-cancel culture” streaming site Rumble, even leading its gaming division. Now that he’s back and able to monetize on YouTube, it’s unclear what will happen there, but with that level of concurrent viewers, he will be back to earning significant amounts of money. In the end, the only real damage here is that almost all brands won’t work with him and his former streamer buddies will mostly have nothing to do with him. But in the end, he’s more or less back where he was, and has bulldozed his way through these accusations and admissions, always “in character.”
As for YouTube’s part in all this, we only got a fairly standard response as to the reinstatement:
“DrDisrespect was previously suspended from the YouTube Partner Program for violations of our Creator Responsibility policies. Creators who are suspended from this program can reapply for access, and after careful review of the channel’s recent activity, we’ve reinstated it. If there are further violations, we’ll take appropriate action.”
That’s saying he was suspended for this off-stream behavior, but now they’re just looking at what his channel has been doing since his ban and that’s not in violation of policies, so he’s back. It’s certainly confusing to understand what changed from six months ago, to three months ago, to now.
So, unless anything else comes out, this is probably it. Doc is back with a large audience that can be heavily monetized like nothing really happened, while the studio he helped found has collapsed. What an ending.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
