DrDisrespect’s Midnight Society Shuts Its Doors: A Look Back at Its Journey After Recent Layoffs
As Google revokes the streamer’s monetization prohibition.
Middle of the night Society, the studio co-founded by the controversial streamer Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm, is closing its doors just four months after making “significant” reductions in staff. This announcement coincides with Google revealing that it is lifting Beahm’s YouTube monetization ban, initially imposed following his admission of “inappropriate” conduct involving a “minor” last year.
Middle of the night Society was established by Beahm and former Call of Duty community manager Robert Bowling in 2021, and the studio released its first game – the free-to-play vertical extraction shooter Deaddrop – the following year. Development on Deaddrop has continued since, but 2024 has been challenging for the studio amid Beahm’s admission that he exchanged “messages with an underage individual back in 2017” that “crossed the line into being inappropriate.”
Bowling and Middle of the night Society were quick to distance themselves from Beahm when the allegations about his conduct first emerged, but the studio was seemingly unable to weather the ensuing storm. It executed “significant” layoffs in September, attributing this to “multiple unexpected challenges in recent months.” Now, Middle of the night Society is closing down.
“Today, we are announcing that Midnight Society will be ceasing operations after three remarkable years, with a fantastic team of 55 developers contributing to our new IP Deaddrop,” the studio stated in a statement posted on social media, adding that it is “actively seeking other game studios that may be interested in providing job opportunities to our skilled team members.”
“We extend our heartfelt thanks to every one of our community members,” the developer concluded, “and [are] profoundly regretful that we could not achieve our ultimate objective.”
The closure of Middle of the night Society aligns with the announcement that Google has lifted its ban preventing Beahm from monetizing his YouTube channel. The channel had been initially demonetized following Beahm’s admission of “inappropriate” behavior with a “minor” last June, and Google opted to maintain that ban following an appeal in October – despite Beahm’s attempts to retract his statement a month earlier when he began referring to the messages as “jokes”. Now,