Turtle Beach ends partnership with “Dr Disrespect” amid allegations of inappropriate behavior

techradar.com:

Gaming accessory manufacturer Turtle Beach has ended its partnership with gaming content creator Guy Beahm, also known as ”Dr Disrespect“, following allegations that he was banned from internet streaming platform Twitch after exchanging sexually explicit messages with a minor.

The supposed justification for the ban, which took place four years ago for undisclosed reasons, surfaced late last week when former Twitch employee Cody Conners made a candid post to X / Twitter seemingly about the matter. “He got banned because [he] got caught sexting a minor in the then existing Twitch whispers product,” the post read. 

These allegations were then corroborated in a recent report from Bloomberg, which stated that their sources claimed that Beahm exchanged sexually explicit messages with a minor through Twitch’s direct chat feature. He also reportedly asked about their plans to attend the then upcoming TwitchCon convention. This led to a complaint filed against Beahm through Twitch’s reporting system, resulting in the ban.

Responding to the claims in a lengthy statement posted to X / Twitter, Beahm admitted that there were “messages with an individual minor back in 2017” but denied any wrongdoing and stated that there was no “real intention behind these messages”. Rather, they were “casual, mutual conversations that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate” in which “nothing illegal happened” and “no pictures were shared”.

In a very brief statement provided to TechRadar Gaming, Turtle Beach said that “we will not be continuing our partnership with Guy Beahm / Dr Disrespect” but refused to provide any explanation for this decision.

The partnership first began back in 2020 and saw the release of the Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max Dr Disrespect Limited Edition gaming headset last year. The listing for the product has since been removed and a quick browse of the Turtle Beach website shows that the company has also scrubbed a number of references to the content creator