The Dr. Disrespect Twitch Ban Looks Bad Because Of This

It's been over a month since Dr. Disrespect has been banned from the platform Twitch.

To get you up to speed, here's who Dr. Disrespect is...his legal name Guy Beahm, and he's a former level designer for Call of Duty video games. But after his video game designing career, he decided to take on the emerging world of online video game streaming. Over the last 5 years, Dr. Disrespect has risen from random game streamer to the face of his industry. He's appeared with ESPN, WWE, and recently signed a television deal with the company responsible for bringing The Walking Dead to TV.

Disrespect was the biggest name on the video game streaming platform Twitch when he caught a permanent ban last month. He was so big, he had signed a deal that is reportedly worth 8 figures to stream exclusively on Twitch. But again, he's been banned, with essentially ends that deal.

The ban of Disrespect has led to many legal minds theorizing that there will be a lawsuit between Twitch and the Doc to get the remaining amount of the contract the two sides agreed to.

But outside of the legal ramifications of the ban from Twitch on Dr. Disrespect, Twitch has found themselves in a weird place with viewers, subscribers, and content creators. Because Twitch has yet to explain themselves when it comes to why they banned Dr. Disrespect, which leaves a lot of creators worried that they could be banned any time, for any reason. It has also upset viewers, and superscribes, who don't want to contribute to a company they don't trust.

In addition to those concerns, Twitch has avoided delivering permanent bans to other creators who have clearly violated their Terms of Service multiple times. The main name that comes up in this argument is the content creator Alinity, who has run into multiple controversies, and has had small bans, but nothing permanent.

Alinity has had controversies surrounding feeding a pet Vodka on her stream, flashing her breast on stream, and throwing a cat against a wall on stream. All of these instances have led to calls for her to be permanently banned...but Twitch has never made that move.

In fact, one of the biggest names in game streaming, and a man who was one of the biggest faces of Twitch, Ninja, took exception to the Alinity issues. Ninja became increasingly vocal when the CEO of Twitch attempted to explain how they decide to ban people.

Since his disagreement with Twitch's CEO, Ninja has left Twitch. He became the face of Mixer, the Microsoft video game streaming platform that was shutdown earlier this year. Ninja became a "free agent" at that point, able to return to Twitch if he wanted to, but he has decided to stay away so far, choosing instead to independently stream on Youtube.

But ultimately, Twitch has a major issue with who it picks and chooses to ban. Alinity isn't the only female who has clearly violated the Twitch Terms of Service who did not receive the same permanent ban that Dr. Disrespect got (without explanation). Earlier this year, the streamer Pokimane streamed a link to a pornographic video live on her stream, and not only did she not receive a permanent ban, she received no ban at all.

This is over the top ridiculous for a company like Twitch. With moves to ban someone permanently, with no reason given, while at the same time not banning people who make clear and public violations, it makes Twitch look terrible to people with brains.