Good morning. Shoutout to everyone who came to The Lighthouse Venice yesterday for our IRL drop! If you couldn’t make it yesterday, don’t worry—keep reading for photos and more details on how to get a copy of the secret project for yourself.

— Hannah Doyle & Nate Graber-Lipperman

Dr Disrespect Addresses 'Inappropriate’ Messages to Minor

Guy Beahm, aka Dr Disrespect, released a statement on X yesterday confirming claims from former Twitch employees that the streamer was banned from the platform for sending inappropriate messages to a minor. 

Backstory: Beahm was banned from Twitch in 2020, and Discord removed him as a partner soon after. Neither platform offered their reasoning for dropping Beahm at the time.

Last week, ex-Twitch employees suggested these messages were the reason for Beahm’s ban. And on Monday, Midnight Society, the game company Beahm co-founded, announced it was ending its relationship with Beahm.

Which brings us to now: In a lengthy statement, Beahm confirmed that he had conversations with a minor “that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate.” He added that “no criminal charges have ever been brought against [him].”

Beahm said he went through an arbitration process with Twitch about the ban before the civil dispute was resolved in a settlement. Twitch has not commented publicly on the issue.

What creators are saying: 

• Nickmercs, who made videos with Beahm, said on X, “There’s no excuse for something like that. I can’t support it, I can’t defend it.”

• TimTheTatman, another Beahm collaborator, said in a video, “If he knew that was a minor and those were the messages being sent, I cannot support that.”

• Ludwig, who made videos outlining the Beahm situation, resurfaced a Tweet from May 2022 in which Beahm told Ludwig he only had two more years of relevance.

Try Guys’ YouTube Duds Find Success on Streaming

One month into the launch of their streaming service, 2nd Try, comedy creators The Try Guys shared an update on how it’s going →

The results? “Our #1 and #5 top watched episodes on the app are our two worst performing YouTube videos in the last 3 months,” Try Guys member Zach Kornfeld wrote on Instagram.

Context: Kornfeld told us in May that a) the unforgiving YouTube algorithm and b) the risks of demonetization pushed them to start 2nd Try.

• “We always feel that YouTube forces this dilution of content that pushes us to make what we never intended to do in the first place,” he said.

• The goal for 2nd Try was to support videos focused less on reaching maximum viewership and more on catering to The Try Guys’ core audience.

And so far, that appears to be working. Kornfeld also shared that the group’s newest episode of “Escape the Kitchen” earned over 50% of its views from TV screens.

Zoom out: The membership-based streaming service trend appears to be heating up. Creator groups including Dropout and Sidemen have turned to Vimeo’s white-label OTT platform to launch their own services in recent years, much in the style of 2nd Try.

Correction: An earlier version of this story listed Critical Role as also launching their streaming service with Vimeo OTT. This is incorrect—they use Memberful.

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BuzzFeed Wants to Sell ‘Hot Ones’ Parent Co for $70M

BuzzFeed is trying to sell First We Feast (the company behind YouTube interview show Hot Ones) for $70 million—a price tag interested buyers have balked at, according to Bloomberg.

• The report indicated that Hot Ones drives the majority of First We Feast’s $30 million in annual revenue through brand and licensing deals.

• This includes selling the show’s hot sauce in over 30,000 grocery stores.

Zoom out: The attempted sale comes as BuzzFeed tries to lower its debt load, which is currently north of $100 million.

➕ Community Tab

Thanks again to everyone who came out to Venice yesterday, as well as our friends at The Lighthouse for hosting us!

Additional copies of the drop will be up for grabs at VidCon this week. Look out for our yellow Publish Press mailbox in the Hyatt lobby and at Colin and Samir’s various panels.

Finally, readers who won’t be at VidCon and couldn’t make the LA drop will be able to buy a copy at presspublish.store before anyone else—keep your eyes peeled for a unique link in Friday’s newsletter. 👀

🔥 Press Worthy

• Lyrical Lemonade partners with Despicable Me 4 to release a music video featuring Lil Yachty.

• Patreon is testing a new feature that lets members gift subscriptions to other fans. 

• X limits livestream features to Premium subscribers.

• Alan Chikin Chow signs with CAA.

• MrBeast reveals a line of collectibles and action figures.

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