'Deadrop' Game Studio Shutting Down Following Dr. Disrespect Dismissal

Seven months after controversial streamer Dr. Disrespect was booted from his own game studio for alleged misconduct, Deaddrop game developer Midnight Society confirmed Thursday that it is shutting down.

"Today, we are announcing Midnight Society will be closing its doors after three incredible years, with an amazing team of over 55 developers contributing to our new IP Deadrop," the company wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday afternoon.

The confirmation comes after Midnight Society Level Designer Brad Boice posted on social media earlier Thursday that employees had been given two days notice of an imminent closure.

“The team at Midnight Society got our two-day notice yesterday that the studio is out of funding and everybody needs to pack up and go home,” Boice posted. “Everyone I worked with at Midnight Society is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING at what they do and is now jobless. I thought we had much, much more runway with funding.”

Robert Bowling, Quinn Delhoyo, Sumit Gupta, and popular video game streamer Dr. Disrespect (real name: Guy Beahm) founded Midnight Society in 2021 to develop vertical extraction shooter Deadrop. The game's development was launched with a sale of NFT access passes minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon.

In June, Beahm was alleged to have had inappropriate conversations with a minor—which he admitted—and that led to the studio cutting ties with the streamer, who had been the game’s primary marketing tool until that point.

Robert Bowling, a studio co-founder and previously a longtime Call of Duty development, has removed all Midnight Society branding from his X account. Bowling and DelHoyo did not respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

In the studio’s first interview following Beahm’s removal from the company, DelHoyo told Decrypt that Midnight Society hadn’t “skipped a beat” and planned to release the full game in fall of 2025.

Still, many believed that the game had no chance to succeed without Beahm’s involvement. Some speculated that it was a mistake to boot the streamer, with many believing it was done without the proper due diligence.

This narrative was only amplified once Beahm changed his story and started started denying the allegations made against him, and then Midnight Society confirmed sizable staff cuts in September. 

However, DelHoyo explained that the company parted ways with Beahm “amicably” after a series of long phone calls in which the streamer explained his side of the story. Beahm himself previously admitted to having conversations with minors that “leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate,” but has since deleted the post, claiming it was made to bait journalists into reporting it.

Beahm has yet to comment publicly on the demise of Midnight Society.

There's no word yet on whether development could be salvaged or continued under another team. Deadrop was being developed with access for NFT-owning "founders," who could play an updated build of the game every so often. For now, fans and NFT buyers appear to be in mourning.

“The saddest part about all of this is that the ideas and universe around Deadrop and Midnight Society are still great,” Mayor Reynolds, a Deadrop streamer and content creator, told Decrypt.

Edited by Andrew Hayward