The Dr Disrespect Esports Debate Explained

We have more esports drama! Twitch Streamer and YouTube personality Dr Disrespect posted a controversial tweet at the end of August, sparking a fierce debate in the esports community. He tweeted:

“You’re not an esport gamer.

You’re a Professional Video Game Player.

I’ll always be right about this. The word ‘esport’ is a nerdy, lazy approach that can always be reverted at anytime if we choose to do so.”

Many have argued that the terms “nerdy” and “lazy” are unnecessary and misplaced here, but his position seems to be that there’s no value in using the term ‘esports’. This is a position shared by many in the industry and isn’t new.

As an industry, we can’t even decide on how to spell esports. Is it ‘e-sports’, ‘eSports’, or  ‘esports’? Does it matter? And why do we use the term ‘esports player?’. After all, we don’t typically refer to NBA players as ‘sports players’, instead we associate them with the specific sport they play. However, many argue that esports is still in its infancy, and many games don’t yet have a ‘household name’ status that would lend itself to calling every pro gamer by the games they play. We also have to consider that many esports pros play multiple games professionally, like is often the case with CSGO and Valorant.

Many newcomers to esports have trouble differentiating between professional gamers, professional streamers, and content creators. Some content creators produce excellent educational gaming content, but they don’t take part in competitive tournaments and are sometimes fairly average players. Put simply, there’s a difference between knowing what plays can advance your standing, and being to execute these moves perfectly every time under pressure. The problem seems to be that we often use ‘esports’ as an umbrella term when referring to players in all three of these categories. It’s not a very specific definition, and this makes it less useful.

Dr Disrespect has stirred up controversy in the past and was banned from Twitch. Dr Disrespect claims that Twitch never warned him about the ban and essentially banned him for no reason. He then went on to criticize the platform and encourage other streamers to stay away from it, arguing that it’s dangerous for streamers to rely on Twitch for their livelihood. He makes a solid point – if you’re a self-employed content creator, it’s inherently risky to have only one stream of income. However, many streamers aren’t convinced that Dr Disrespect is telling the truth when he says that he has no idea why he was banned.

Several prominent streamers have come forward to express some doubt about Dr Disrespect’s narrative, the most recent being ChocoTaco who said he doesn’t know why people are blindly believing Dr Disrespect’s story. However, without Twitch weighing in on this, we will likely never know the official reason he was permanently banned, or whether he received warnings prior to the ban taking place.