The self-proclaimed two-time video game world-champion, Dr Disrespect, has been banned from Twitch again, but this time the ban came without warning or reasoning. Dr Disrespect is no stranger to controversy as he has been banned from the platform before after filming himself and others inside of a restroom at TwitchCon, but he has not been party to any recent public affairs.
The ban was first reported by StreamerBans, a Twitter account that auto-reports on when partnered Twitch streamers are banned from the platform. Dr Disrespect was banned at 3:01 p.m. with his channel being removed from Twitch.
While the specific reasoning for the ban remains unknown at this time, multiple reports indicate the ban is permanent and that it did not involve a simple DMCA violation - a commonly speculated reason after Amazon-owned Twitch started enforcing far stricter rules on the use of copyrighted music. Dr Disrespect has yet to comment on the ban publicly, but one of the top Twitch streamers and partners TimTheTatman who plays with him regularly stated on stream that, in talking with "Doc", Dr Disrespect was "talking to Twitch to figure out what had happened."
While the statement made by Tim leads to believe that Dr Disrespect does not know the reasoning for his ban, Zach Bussey, the founder of Creator Hype, Tweeted that Twitch will not be making any public statements on the ban. He also stated that Twitch's corporate communications team has been responding to press inquiries with the following statement:
"As is our process, we take appropriate action when we have evidence that a streamer has acted in violation of our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. These apply to all streamers regardless of status or prominence in the community." - Twitch Official Statement
Esports insider Rod Breslau posted a couple of tweets claiming that Dr Disrespect has been permanently banned from Twitch, and the reasoning is not DMCA related.
The reasoning for Dr Disrespect's Twitch ban remains unknown at this time but Screen Rant has reached out to Twitch for a comment. But it's obviously serious as pointed out by @ShannonZKiller (who works for popular Twitch streamer @Sacriel42) who teased to know the reason but would not share it, gathering thousands of likes before being called out for using the situation for clout, and then deleting:
We don't know what "not just on Twitch" means since some of Dr Disrespect's other channels (YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) remain live. Shortly after his Twitch channel was suspended, Discord reportedly removed their partnership with DrDisrespect.
Viewers who subscribed to DrDisrespect on Twitch within the last month started to receive notifications that their subscriptions had been refunded. This is the first time in Twitch's history of banning an individual that their recent subscriptions were refunded. When popular ISL streamer IcePoseidon was permanently banned from Twitch in 2017, his subscribers had access to his emotes after he was banned until their subscriptions ran out. In DrDisrespect's case, all of his emotes have been removed from Twitch, and all of his subscribers have been refunded.
DrDisrespect's wife posted to her Instagram story shortly after the ban thanking the Champion's Club for the outpouring of love and support during this time. The Champion's Club is the name DrDisrespect has given his following. This post leads to believe that his permanent ban is not directly related to the 2017 cheating scandal when DrDisrespect admitted on stream to having cheated on his wife.
This story is developing...
Sources: StreamerBan/Twitter, 100T Classy/Twitter