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Dr DisRespect claims he ‘broke’ Twitch (Updated)

Twitch is growing fast, but it wants to focus on that growth.
Image Credit: Twitch
@jeffgrubb

In December, Guy “Dr DisRespect” Beahm announced he was taking a break from livestreaming even though he was one of the biggest personalities on Twitch. Today, Dr DisRespect has returned, and the huge audience tuning in to watch him was too much for the site’s servers.

As Dr DisRespect’s broadcast was starting, several Twitch features suddenly quit loading. Dr DisRespect, along with many others, could not start their streams. I’ve reached out to ask Twitch about this outage, but Dr DisRespect is taking credit on Twitter.

Twitch looks like it is working now, and the Dr DisRespect stream has nearly 350,000 concurrent viewers.

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Beahm is a former game developer who turned into a full-time streamer with his Dr DisRespect character. His channel’s growth exploded in popularity in 2017 alongside the rise of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Doc, as his fans call him, has an aggressive, self-aggrandizing personality, and taking down Twitch will likely add fuel to the flames of his amplified ego.

This return to Twitch comes after nearly two months off following a public admission of infidelity by Beahm. He said he needed the time off to spend time with his family.

https://youtu.be/xzUreYfLAuE

While it’s easy to describe livestreaming as “playing games for a living,” many broadcasters talk about the emotional toll of a life in front of a camera. To build an audience, livestreamers feel that they need to play every day and for long durations.

Beahm’s break from Twitch is part of a new trend where top creators like Lirik and ManVsGame take time off to focus on their mental health. And it seems like that time off has not destroyed Dr Disrepsect’s popularity — at least not as far as Twitch’s severs are concerned.

Updated at 11:35 a.m. Pacific: Twitch is back online.