'Fraudulent' Dr Disrespect Fires Back At Critic

Dr Disrespect is a streamer whose entire online persona revolves around acting over the top and aggressive. Most of the time, he does this for the sake of entertainment, but there are times when the act seems to become the real deal. That's what happened this week when Dr Disrespect was confronted by a journalist who took issue with how the Doc had been promoting and labeling his streams. 

A bit of backstory is required here: Dr Disrespect has been playing a lot of Valorant lately, the new tactical hero shooter from Riot Games, the company that brought us League of Legends. During this period, Riot has been offering opportunities for a limited number of players to access the closed beta for the game. To this end, Riot Games is permitting certain streamers to give out "drops" that contain access keys for the Valorant beta. It's a pretty cool concept that should raise awareness of Valorant and give these streamers a boost in their viewership numbers from folks who just want to get into that sweet, sweet beta.

Unfortunately for some of Dr Disrespect's hopeful viewers, the streamer has apparently been labeling his streams in such a way that makes it seem he's planning to/capable of giving away these drops. Not only is this apparently not the case, but some viewers are alleging that they were banned from Dr Disrespect's channel after asking him to cease the false advertising. This all led to sports interviewer and League of Legends fanatic Travis Gafford calling the Doc out on Twitter. It only got messier from there.

"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," tweeted Gafford. "Pretty fraudulent. People in my twitch chat are saying he's banning people telling him to stop in his chat."

Never one to back down from a challenge, Dr Disrespect soon responded to Gafford. "Fragile, concerned little tattle teller," he replied. Nevertheless, Dr Disrespect changed the title of his stream shortly afterwards.

Which, uh, isn't a denial. It sure seems like some of this is intentional on Dr Disrespect's part, but why? Apparently, it's something that's happening quite a bit in the streaming community. Gafford later explained that he's heard stories of multiple streamers labeling their streams in this way.

"People in my replies are saying lots of streamers are doing this, if so that's pretty disappointing. Just be sure to look under the stream title to see where it says 'Drops enabled,'" tweeted Gafford. "I think the system can be kind of confusing for folks."

Basically, to get into the beta for Valorant, gamers have been encouraged to check out the channels of streamers who are currently playing it and check the fine print on their profiles. As explained by Polygon, "Only select streamers are eligible to give out drops, which you can find by looking for the tag under the stream that says 'Drops Enabled.'"

This seems pretty straightforward, but it's understandably confusing to see one of your favorite streamers hyping up that they've got plenty of drops when they simply don't. It honestly makes sense that Gafford was so frustrated by the confusion here. Valorant is still in its early days, but people are clamoring to get their hands on it. 

As for why the beta is so exclusive? Riot Games has explained that it's being done as a way of maintaining quality control during the beta period. As detailed on the Valorant website, "We want to support a stable, competitive, high-fidelity gameplay experience above all, even if that means limiting the number of people we can support for now. We can't and won't undermine gameplay quality for the sake of getting everyone in. This means we'll continue to be careful about how many players we let into Closed Beta over the course of the next few days and weeks—it's a lot of players, but honestly not nearly as much as the current demand we're seeing."

There are plenty of reasons why fans are excited for Valorant and would want to get in on the ground floor. A new hero shooter is always an exciting prospect, for one. For another, it has been attracting the attention of several high profile streamers, which is always a reason for excitement with fans on Twitch and Mixer.

Just last month, noted streamer Pokimane mentioned that she thought Valorant had the potential to be "the Overwatch killer." In other words, this game could dethrone the current king of hero shooters, which is more than enough of a reason for people to want to dive in as soon as possible.