Dr Disrespect Breaks His Silence On Drop Scandal

Just last week, Dr Disrespect came under fire for labeling his streams in a misleading manner. He had been putting the word "drops" in his stream titles, which led many disappointed viewers to believe that he was giving away keys to access the closed beta for Riot Games' Valorant.

This was not the case, as pointed out by esports interviewer Travis Gafford tweeting, "Heads up, Dr. Disrespect has, for the past two days, had 'drops' in his title, but his stream actually isn't flagged to drop keys. Pretty fraudulent. People in my twitch chat are saying he's banning people telling him to stop in his chat."

This led to a number of news outlets running with the story and a number of fans calling Dr Disrespect out on Twitter. Well, Dr Disrespect has finally responded to the controversy in a new video.

"I should probably step up, be a man about the situation. A lot of people were upset," says a somber-looking Doc. "News outlets picked it up: Kotaku, GameStop. So, I would like to officially put out an official response. I don't give a [expletive]."

Dr Disrespect then stares completely stonefaced into the camera for several seconds. He doesn't speak at all, which is a bit of a new tactic for the normally verbose streamer. You'd be forgiven for thinking the video had frozen. After a while, Dr Disrespect adds, "You're looking at the best in the business in the, baby. You think I give a [expletive]?" 

Dr Disrespect then laughs into the microphone for a few moments and then shakes his head dismissively before ending the video.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise to see this kind of response from Dr Disrespect. After all, the guy's entire online persona is built around being a bit of a brash "tough guy." He's made a name for himself with his big reactions (or overreactions) and penchant for constant trash talk in online matches. 

Heck, he didn't even really take this situation seriously when he was first called out on the false Valorant drops. When Gafford told Dr Disrespect's fans to be careful and watch out for the fake drops, Dr Disrespect responded to Gafford's tweets in the usual dismissive tone he takes with his critics. He called Gafford a "Fragile, concerned little tattle teller."

However, as some folks on Twitter have pointed out, this is potentially a much bigger deal than Dr Disrespect seems to be making it out to be. There's a chance that the Doc could even be violating Twitch's terms of service and could potentially land himself in a bit of hot water if enough fans feel cheated and complain about the situation.

Being reprimanded by Twitch has basically been the only thing proven to make Dr Disrespect stop and actually apologize in the past. This was seen last year when he was banned from Twitch for streaming in a public restroom. This was seen as a violation by Twitch and his account was suspended for two full weeks as a result.

Of course, Dr Disrespect made a fun video in the meantime where he hyped up his eventual return. This was a solid way of making sure that his brand didn't lose any momentum in the absence of new Twitch content. However, it's worth noting that he did actually take the ban seriously, as temporary as it was.
To that end, he made the rare move of entirely breaking character and posting an apology to fans from his IRL Twitter account. Even this was seen as a bit of a cop out from some people, however. 

As The Verge's Julia Alexander put it, "By not using his main channel to address the controversy, Beahm could take responsibility without worrying about damage to his brand." According to Alexander, this tactic was exemplified by the fact that he posted the apology to a personal account with around 1 million less followers than the main Dr Disrespect account.

Whether or not you agree with that assessment, it's hard not to feel like the Doc is blatantly trolling people about the whole situation. However, some fans seem to feel like that's a good thing, sharing the video and seemingly getting a kick out of it.

Still others have taken Dr Disrespect to task for the misleading stream titles. One person tweeted, "The man puts 'Drops' in the stream title 5 [expletive] times and doesn't even have drops enabled, what a chad."

We'll see if anything more comes of this. For the time being, however, it looks like Dr Disrespect isn't going to change his attitude any time soon.