The streamer Guy “DrDisrespect” Beahm signed an exclusive contract with the streaming service Twitch worth several million US dollars in 2020, but was banned from the platform shortly thereafter. He now streams on YouTube. In a stream, he explains how much he lost due to the ban, stating that his income has shrunk to a quarter.
This is the situation:
- DrDisrespect is a former developer of Call of Duty: He worked as a community manager and created some maps for Advanced Warfare. However, in 2015 he was unemployed, had to support a young family, lived with his wife and child in a rundown area, and couldn’t find a new job in the gaming industry.
- As “DrDisrespect” with a mustache and macho attitude, now in his 30s but dreaming of “glorious times” from the past, Beahm reinvented himself. With a loud voice and an even louder ego, he became one of the most important streamers on Twitch in 5 years. The peak of his career seemed to be reached in March 2020: There he signed a “multi-million dollar” contract.
- Shortly thereafter, DrDisrespect was banned from Twitch. The reasons are still unclear. For a long time, DrDisrespect reportedly didn’t even know why he was banned. Now he says he knows the reasons but wants to “sue Twitch hard”.
“I’m making about a quarter of what I made on Twitch”
How much money has he lost? In a new stream on YouTube, DrDisrespect says:
I’m making about a quarter of what I made on Twitch. A year after the ban, a lot of people said, “Hey Doc, you’re doing fine.”
People, listen, we’ve tried to make the best out of the situation, and I really appreciate your support. But the Twitch ban really hit us hard, not just financially but also in terms of contacts and the network.
DrDisrespect then explains that all his major partners like Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty) or EA (Battlefield) questioned him: “Why were you banned from Twitch?”
The ban has undermined his plans to build a large “Doc Universe” and expand his umbrella widely. He talks about “shadowbanning” and “blacklisting”: Apparently, due to the ban on Twitch, he missed out on good opportunities to become even more relevant in gaming that he had seen before.
DrDisrespect says: Right now, he is doing well … enough. However, he doesn’t seem very excited about his new situation as “YouTube streamer without a contract”.
Are there exact figures on how much he has lost? No, one can only speculate. A “realistic number” for what DrDisrespect earned at his peak on Twitch after signing the huge contract is estimated to be around 6 million US dollars a year.
Twitch apparently paid him handsomely because there was a fear at the time of losing the next big name to competitor Mixer after shroud and Ninja, who were reportedly throwing around huge sums in the range of “20 to 30 million US dollars for 4 years”.
The estimated earnings of DrDisrespect are a mix of:
- the new thick salary from Twitch
- sponsorship deals with large and small partners
- Twitch subscriptions
- donations
- other sources of income like the secondary exploitation of his streams on YouTube, which he could still do back then. The German streamer MontanaBlack once explained how that works for him.
If DrDisrespect has lost 75% of his income and the estimate is correct, he would be missing 4.5 million US dollars a year. But he would still earn 1.5 million US dollars a year on YouTube. This could keep his “operation” running, but he would be operating on a very different level than before.
However, this is speculation.
DrDisrespect has not only suffered financially from the ban from Twitch:
Dr Disrespect is struggling to cope with the Twitch ban and has real problems
