The Twitch ban of Herschel “DrDisrespect” Beahm is notorious to this day. Thanks to a new rule change, streamers are now allowed to show the Doc again – but he still can’t return.
What are these new rules? Twitch announced on the evening of April 4, 2024, our time, on X, formerly Twitter, that they are adjusting one of their strictest rules: the one regarding “ban evasion.” From now on, streamers are allowed to show and react to videos and streams of their banned colleagues.
However, it is required that one actually reacts to and comments on the shown content. Joint Twitch streams with banned streamers are still prohibited.
This rule change is interesting because Twitch has so far shown little leniency regarding ban evasion:
- These rules are intended to prevent streamers from evading their bans by going live on another channel or appearing in the stream of a friend content creator.
- Anyone who brings a banned colleague into their stream can be banned themselves, thus risking a vital source of income.
- Streamers were even instructed to keep banned users “to the best of their knowledge and belief” out of their streams, mute them, or restrict interaction if they happen to encounter them – for example, at a third-party gaming tournament.
In a comment, Twitch explained that they are adapting to the constantly evolving content on the platform (via X.com).
How does DrDisrespect factor in? The infamous streamer is the reason Twitch tightened the rules regarding ban evasion in 2020. His permanent ban is also the most famous and mysterious in Twitch’s history.
To this day, neither he nor the streaming platform has publicly explained why one of the then biggest streamers on Twitch was suddenly banned in June 2020. However, there is plenty of speculation about the reason for the ban, which has been fueled by hints, such as those from Twitch CEO Dan Clancy recently.
While Amouranth is calmly serving her 10th temporary ban and even the controversial YouTuber IShowSpeed has returned to Twitch, the Doc has been out of the picture for almost 4 years.
Now he is allowed to flicker back across the screens of Twitch viewers.
What is DrDisrespect doing? He has been streaming on YouTube since his ban and doing so quite successfully. However, he has a major disadvantage there: YouTube lured successful streamers away from Twitch for big money, but they got the Doc for free. While others secured lucrative exclusive contracts, he was left empty-handed.
When the new competitor platform Kick distributed million-dollar deals in the summer of 2023, the Doc also wanted a piece of the pie and brazenly demanded 50 million dollars.
