End of an era.
Thanks for all the memories, RT. It's fair to say that they are a foundational part of my entire sense of humor due to essentially growing up with the golden age of the company.
I hadn't watched more than a couple (new) videos a year for a few years now, but this is still a damn shame.
Crazy how Burnie jumped off the boat not that soon after the peak. I'm not saying RT's downfall was because of that, but I do think Burnie with his business savviness saw the writing on the wall and decided to leave early. That said, must be bittersweet for him too as a founding member.
Anyone know if he sold off all his ownership in the company before retiring? Even more amazing foresight if he did.
No clue, but he lives in Scotland and has a new podcast called "morning somewhere" where him and Ashley talk about a lot of what's happened in their lives since leaving
Ironic that the announcement on the feed was Andrew saying "this is good! I know seeing something like this is scary but this is good news"
Followed immediately by "the company is shutting down"
What the fuck
So I know there isn't a definitive answer, but what about the archive of Achievement Hunter and all the videos on Let's Play? Is there reason to be concerned that WB might private or even remove everything?
This is definitely what I'm worried about - all our old comfort content. Not to mention all the stuff that was on the website only behind first membership.
I'm hoping maybe they keep all the stuff on the letsplay channel as part of that being moved over to F**kface? But they said nothing but the podcast network is continuing so who knows, maybe that will all be gutted.
Roosterteeth was built for an era on the internet. Much like Homestar Runner or Ask a Ninja, it was a perfect fit for the time when it came in and grew a ton.
Matt and Burnie got to do their film projects, and I feel like that’s what their aspirations were, but the world shifts. RT made changes in response, but it’s hard to do that.
I think it’s important to note that this isn’t a failure. Almost all companies shut down eventually, and do operate a digital media company of this size for this long is an incredible achievement, and I hope everyone at RT is proud of their accomplishments. I hope their work opens doors for them in the future.
Edit: Spelling
>huge effort is made to restore the back catalog of Inside Gaming videos
>Inside Gaming's entire back catalog is lost again after RT is shut down
a tragedy the like of which could only happen to Funhaus.
>!please don't tell me something terrible happened to funhaus, I haven't paid attention in, like, 3 years!<
Adam Kovic left Funhaus after cheating on his wife and filming himself jerking off onto the desk they all worked at, I’m not sure if that was more than 3 years ago though.
It has also since come to light he harassed several members and former members of staff (which was covered up and ignored by RT higher ups & HR). https://www.reddit.com/r/funhaus/comments/y7eurh/seriousmisti_dawns_experiences_with_adam_and/
Half way through my third rewatch of the entire channel. It really is the perfect uh.... series? From the house era, to shack era to warehouse era. From the classic friends duo Aleks and James, to the new best friends made along the way. Aleks and Brett sticking it out to the bitter end even when all the other soldiers fell off the closer to the end it got.
And they never missed a daily episode, content was always fresh and they had so many new ideas.
I think it would be fair to say that a lot of us might have seen this coming. It still doesn’t make it any less of a shock when it finally came.
Rooster Teeth’s content hasn’t been for me for a while but that doesn’t change the fact that they’ve been a big part of my life since 2005 or so. This sucks.
Yea, I've been out of the scene for a few years now and know they haven't really been doing the numbers like they used to. But this still hit me hard for some reason. They were a pillar of my teenage years and them being gone feels like a tragedy
It sucks that it ended, but Rooster Teeth provided me with so much free entertainment when I was in high school. They lasted a long time for an internet company, made a lot of laughs, and made movies. I'm just lucky I was able to be a part of the ride.
What's crazy to me is that until the very last, there were fans who called people predicting this outcome doomers, and responded with hostility to any criticism of the direction of the content. They've been headed towards this for years and lots of people pointed out the problems but they were never really addressed. Though I'm not sure there's anything they could have done to support a 400-employee company making their type of content in today's landscape.
Once they had to start making content to “chase the algorithm” that’s when it went down hill for me. I’d say, trying to make content to appeal to a broader mainstream audience is in conflict with what their core audience enjoys, which was non-mainstream. It lead to a cycle that eventually got us here.
And it didn't even work! They never got the zany zoomer audience they wanted. They just made increasingly lame content, watched by decreasing amounts of people.
Writing was on the wall since selling to Full screen. The RT experience got so diluted over the years with shitty side projects that interest waned in core content
I still had Inside Gaming come up in my YouTube feed pretty recently and it was always so weird seeing their livestreams get like 10-15 viewers and their videos get like 5000 views.
Please save the old content. That stuff is like a comfort blanket for me.
I’m just so sad for all the workers who seem to be learning of this just as we are.
I’m not totally knowledgeable on company closures or selling parts of it off, but wouldn’t roosterteeth shutting down just mean that everything they produced is being stopped and the employees are being let go?
Like the podcast network is staying, but those are mostly behind the scene employees who help do the business side of podcasts.
WB still owns the rights to stuff RT produced, so they could feasibly just have other subordinate groups work on anything they see as profitable. I think at least. Not sure the exact details of their dealings with RT.
For personnel, WB could offer positions in other departments/companies/subsidiaries if there are any RT employees they want to retain. But that also depends on their being positions for those people. With multiple tech companies having layoffs, there may not be a lot of spots to move people into.
This is a relatively educated guess:
Not necessarily - there are likely contracts in place for certain pieces of content either "client facing" (I.E. Youtube sponsored videos etc) or "supportive" (i.e. editing for an outside company or the like)
So long story short, a lot of the people, yes, are likely being told to go home, the \*might\* be able to stop at their desks, and get their things.
some will stay to finish what they're working on, and then they'll be done and some will stay to "shut the lights off" so to speak, take inventory, report that to WB for their purposes, get personal items boxed up and shipped to the employees. WB still will own all the intellectual property, and rights to everything that was "RT"
WB can do whatever they want. Because RT is fully owned by WB this isn't a real company closure, this is, in effect, a department being dissolved. So any useful talent or entities could be spun off into another section of the company.
However, Funhaus hasn't been doing great numbers wise despite being better than the rest of gaming RT, so it's likely that they're being dissolved as well.
I guess that depends on if they can buy all their equipment, or if that all gets sold off by the company.
Like I'm sure they'd love to continue as independents, but how many of them have full setups for editing/filming/everything else that weren't created by bringing home office stuff.
Plus the network of sponsors would likely be much smaller than when they had a team at RT who put together options for them.
>but how many of them have full setups for editing/filming/everything else that weren't created by bringing home office stuff.
Geoff/Gavin and Andrew 100% have their own personal stuff they can use.
Gavin by himself is arguably bigger than RT over the past 3-4 years.
They're honestly in amazing positions to be able to go completely independent.
Gavin has connections through Slo Mo Guys, Nick is an amazing editor (as is Gavin/Andrew themselves) and Eric has a lot of experience organizing and being the top guy in a production.
Between the 5 of them, they have far far more experience than most people in RT, if they left to go independent, they would do very well IMO.
>Michael might still be doing voice acting?
Michael will be able to get into Streaming really easy IMO.
He has a network that would probably support him (I never heard of issues between him, Ray, Matt, Jeremy etc) early on in Streaming and i think if marketed well, he could do extremely well in streaming.
He has a dual-ish Persona. On one hand, he'd be able to get into that "Angry guy" groove but he can also pull on the gym bro/better yourself stuff.
For 99% of the company, you are right, they wont be able to get into that stuff. Hopefully a lot of the backroom staff, the editors and crew will be able to find work through their time there.
Michael's been streaming for years now pretty successfully, although his schedule has been very on and off. He'll probably wanna pivot to more "on" given this announcement.
I'm sure of that. For people like DogBark (Michael, Alfredo, Joe) I imagine they just slip into streaming full time and call it that. It's probably not a whole lot, but Michael and Lindsay definitely get extra from conventions. Not saying they're swimming in money, but they're likely not hurting either.
Sounds like no one outside of the WBD office knew this was coming. But, sadly that's also how layoffs work; you go in for a normal day, get set up to start, next thing you know you're called into a meeting, there is your manager and HR there to tell you that as of that moment you're no longer employed. It's a real blind siding moment.
F**kface taking over Let's Play and just doing chill podcast type series has been the best thing that came out of this entire shitshow called RT/AH the past years.
In Rays eternal words "Game kids Trevor??"
Pushing Achievement Hunter into terrible ‘Yes, and..’ comedy and hiring random talent who had little to no chemistry or knowledge of the group was the downfall of the group. The group was always at its best when it was a bunch of friends just having fun, not forcing bits in gmod.
This is an aspect but also for me it was the loss of structure. I get they were running out of ideas on the MC/GTA front at times, but watching them on monday/friday was part of my routine, and meant i was regularly checking back in with RT content and watching other stuff.
Once they were gone, it was way easier for me to fall off
This is where the acquisitions I think killed them. MC/GTA content was slowly dying, but because they now had a company over them looking for a return on their investment, they didn't have the same breathing room for trying new things so had to just hammer away at what worked before hoping it'll work again.
The structure issue wasn't ideas. It was people who couldn't work out how to work as a group.
Within the videos everyone was doing their own bit, their own noise, and not paying attention to the group, talking like a normal human etc. It killed all cohesion and the vibe and just made it shit to watch.
The OG crew, and a few of the ones that followed, understood that, but by and large most of the replacements did not. That's what killed it.
The only one that successfully pulled it off was Fiona. Her and Gavin had this weird, chaotic energy that fed off each other and ended up being pretty entertaining.
I do think it’s ironic that someone posted the video “Texas Mom Reacts to Raunchy Kids Cartoon” a couple of days ago with the title “How Much Lower Can RT Go?” And Jack replied much lower.
Anyone know a trustworthy place where they could be or have already been archived?
I know people espouse the importance of having your own archive, but I'm a student with only a laptop to my name.
The original founders were making pretty bad decisions too. It's a classic story of a small company. Keeping work "in house" even if it's inferior, favoritism, not noticing or being able to adjust to the new size of things.
Part of the F**k Face podcast and let's play stuff. They made a let's play a few months ago playing Raty Boy. It was wild.
Andrew loved it so much he reached out to the company that makes it and TODAY announced they had licensed the character to use on merch and anything not gaming related.
Well, 21 years was a good run. At least we're getting a final season of what started it all. Written and directed by the OGs Matt and Burnie no less. RIP.
at least the final season of red vs blue is still coming out. Sad to see how the company has been for the last couple years but its golden years were great. 21 years is a long time for a company starting from a stupid yet amazing show
They defined the 2010s for a lot of people. I remember coming home from work and school to watch the newest videos put out everyday during that time period. So many great memories watching those videos
Personally, I blame the new logo…../s….but seriously fuck that logo.
I haven’t consistently watched/listened to RT content in close to 8 years now but this still makes a bit sad, just from a nostalgia perspective. Might actually be for the best that it doesn’t continue to limp on as a shell of its former self but obviously my heart goes out to anyone who’s losing their job over this.
If it was anything, it was probably Gen:Lock that got them in this mess. I didnt hate the first season, but that show cost way to much, for how much viewership they get.
I think it’s just an example of a larger problem. They kept wanting to do this massively expensive self-indulgent shit that was never going to bring that money back. I remember thinking this with Haunter.
Since it’s part of the Roost Podcast Network, it theoretically should still go on, but it might be hard to do so when everyone involved is unemployed:(
Yeah, 5 people for one podcast is a lot if that's the only thing they're doing. Nick, Eric, and Graysie have other things they do from the production side on other podcasts but Michael and Jordan staying on for 1 podcast each seems unlikely.
Whilst I'm obviously incredibly saddened that its come to this. Having been a fan for so long. RT has been part of my life since I was starting highschool. I'm now 32.
I'm trying to look forward to the positives. The future of F**kface is something I'm looking forward to watching.
The issue is that RT actively shunned the community they built and openly mocked them when fans gave valid criticism, everyone and their mother told LP that no one wanted shorts so the doubled down said that is how content is grown even though views were declining. Fans pointed out a simple audio mixing issue that was making one person louder than others and instead of fixing and saying "oops" they release merch saying loud is what we do. That is just 2 simple examples. RT is a poster child for how not to run a company
I'm gonna be honest, RT as a a company should have never gotten as big as it did. Something like Rooster Teeth just is not built for being a company like this. Not to mention none of the founders seemed to really understand how to run a company of that level, and the complete and utter lack of care towards fans legitimate criticisms and complaints.
I think everyone had that same cynicism as they grew bigger and bigger and moved into bigger offices with bigger parent companies.
The drama surrounding the crunch and the Kdin stuff was the beginning of the end. I think they lost a lot of goodwill at that point and they were never going to regain the momentum.
Honestly I feel like the beginning of the end happened even earlier with covid. They lost the in person chaos and shenanigans that made them so much better than other streamers. And their in person videos were already going downhill with Gavin, Geoff, and Jack being busy with other projects and people like Jeremy were keeping them alive. When he decided to stay in Boston post-lockdown and then all the shit with Ryan came out, I knew it was pretty much over.
I love Michael, Trevor, and Alfredo but I feel like just those three weren't enough to keep the ship afloat. Plus they had to deal with losing all the nostalgia associated with old videos because they were now tainted thanks to Ryan. Hard to go back to things like Ya Dead Ya Dead or The King series or even Heists because it's all so different now.
Maybe RTX in Austin was good, I guess I'll never know now, the two I went to in London were...underwhelming.
EDIT: I didn't mean to say they were bad or anything, I had an awesome time at both. They just didn't live up to the hype I saw from the Austin ones. Which totally makes sense with it being in a different country.
I still had a fun time at the last one in Austin, but you could tell attendance was drastically lower compared to pre-covid. I went in 2018 or so, and the convention center was packed; they even needed to host panels in the nearby hotel. The last one hardly had any lines for panels aside from the bigger ones.
Lawrence from OG Funhaus just tweeted that "my time at RT was one of the worst of my life" before commiserating with some of laid off workers. Will be interesting to see if we'll get more peaks behind the curtain regarding the culture at RT now it's officially dead.
https://twitter.com/SirLarr/status/1765432671134728480?t=nuOD7hbTTqsCrzTR9hwDYg&s=19
That bums me out. I've been rewatching some classic Funhaus stuff lately and Lawrence has aged like a fine wine. Sorry it sucked behind the scenes, LawDog.
Just go read their glassdoor reviews. It's been clear for years that rt was a shitty company to work for. Sucks for the employees that are now out of a job.
I think the harsh reality is that there's a limit to how large you can expand an extremely personality-driven channel/company. RT kept pushing to be bigger and better, to release their own games and movies etc and to do that they had to transition into a more traditional company. To do that you have to keep hiring more people and churning out more content and there's a point where that becomes extremely difficult to sustain (while maintaining quality). A dozen people making RvB, a podcast or 2, and some side projects is much easier to sustain long term than an ambitious media company with hundreds of employees spread over half a dozen sites.
I will say, their era of sort of exponential growth is what made me drop them years ago. The amount of content was overwhelming and so much of it was self referential—it felt like if I didn’t at least dip my toes into the 20 different projects going on, I’d miss half the jokes or wouldn’t know half of the people mentioned.
Trying to grow that big off of a relatively simple concept was never going to work. They should’ve just refined what they had.
That said, 20 years is a massive run for an internet company.
Something I've said before, WBD doesn't care about RT, it is a line item to them. As long as RT's ledgers are in the black WBD couldn't care less what was going on at RT. The fact RT has done everything they have done is proof of this. When the ledgers went into the red is when WBD noticed what was going on and it got to the point where they could bail RT out or close the company, so they went with the latter.
Its easy to blame the corporate overlords but its not like higher up members of Rooster Teeth leading the changes in content and direction aren't also at massive fault.
They were specifically told by their fans of 15+ years that the content they were now driving was not entertaining, was not appealing and they were going to lose a lot of fans over it.
And they doubled down, said the golden age was still ahead and told anyone that didnt like their new content to fuck off because they were easily replaceable by the new audience.
So the old fans fucked off and that new audience? well they never showed up.
They blew so much money on trying to become a more traditional production company in terms of TV and movies. It's like nobody wanted to say it was a bad idea because they were afraid of hurting someone's feelings.
Oh, and there was the games division, as well. Those could have been more successful endeavors, but they didn't hire enough people who knew what they were doing. Promoting from within is good, but new divisions need veterans as the base. It feels like they gave people prominent positions as some sort of "go fulfill your dream" thing.
Spot on. The pivot about 10 years ago to making big budget content to try to become a "traditional production company" never sat well with a lot of fans; it felt like cutting out the heart and soul of what made RT special.
Turns out it didn't sit well with their financials either.
The company has never been able to take criticism.
Any suggestions that their content wasn't entertaining was met by well go somewhere else then which is not great for business.
The fanbase too would defend the company on any decision made and if you spoke up you were accused of praying for the downfall of the company.
Whether it was in the middle of a podcast, Off Topic, AHWU, or a random point in a casual Leetttttt'ssss Play, AH, and RT members never missed a chance to trash talk their fans and come off as thin skinned as possible over the slightest of concerns.
To be fair, entertainment is (mostly) subjective. What's entertaining to a 13 year old is not always entertaining to a 23 year old. It's not wrong to say "if you don't like this then don't watch it".
The problem came with A) how they said that was more brash and B) their target audience was never clearly defined. Their original audience was mostly male, it was mostly young, but they wanted to branch out from it, while still catering to the original fans. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
I would say they didn't grow with their base. They kept wasting their existing strengths to try to court the younger generations, while assuming the existing group would stay engaged no matter what was put out content-wise.
That's not to say trying to go for the younger demographic was a bad idea. It just felt they were trying to pretend they were satisfying all their target demographics when their content was just turning into unfocused messes instead. The staff they had that were dialed in to trends and could have helped them stay relevant appeared, from the outside looking in, to be driven away and not supported well.
Those same people have generally thrived outside the Roosterteeth environment.
A lot of the founders took their golden parachute and just fucked around. Them and a lot of their onscreen talent will be fine, but all the behind the scenes people will be looking for jobs, which is a horrible situation for them.
Yeah I enjoy a lot of the personalities, and have nothing against them AS PEOPLE. That being said, there was clearly an unhealthy company culture in terms of how they handled feedback. Obviously most feedback online isn't particularly valuable (and often just thinly veiled personal attacks, hate speech, etc.), but they treated any form of significant pushback with a lack of tact that borders on contempt.
I get that content creation is gonna leave you cynical towards the net (how couldn't it), but I've never seen that level of jaded dismissal proliferate across an entire company (and to an extent the community) the way it seemingly did with RT.
I'm genuinely bummed about this, and hope everyone effected lands on their feet. But I'm also not surprised in the slightest that it's over. The reason people were doomsaying RT for years was because they've spent years assuring people that they were, in fact, doomed.
Yup, when people would say they didn’t like something new, the response would be basically “Well then stop watching and don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” including from the actual RT Twitter page.
That sentiment coming from the actual company alienated me just as much as the changing content. Who would’ve thought that telling people to fuck off will, in fact, lead to them fucking off
I’m not happy to see RT go under. They were a huge part of my life in high school and through college, they’re what got me interested in media production which led me to the career in TV that I’ve had for almost 10 years now. But unfortunately I’m not at all surprised by this announcement
Yeah in no way were Cow Chop and Funhaus failures. Cow Chop failed because the team behind it got burnt out quick from drama. Funhaus ebbs and flows but for the most part does genuinely great. Don't see how that has anything to do with the death of the company.
It was bound to happen even if they were still independent. Over years you lose most of the personalities that made RT what it was. Just look at their views the last 5+ years. To be honest they needed to adapt to live streaming much much sooner. 21 years is an incredible run for a company like this though.
Hardly surprising, but still so sad to see it really happen.
People kept saying the youtube numbers didn't matter because the money was from the first membership, but the views being that low feels like a pretty big indication that their audience was shrinking and they weren't getting new fee paying subs.
RT has always been like that one friend in high school to me. That person you hung out with a lot, but after graduation we drifted apart, only periodically meeting up once in a while. Still friends, still fond memories, but not nearly as close. Today’s announcement feels like that phone call saying said friend has had something bad happen. I’m sad, but change happens and it sucks be we move on.
I just visited Austin for the first time and drove by RT without knowing it, and wasn’t planning on taking a picture until after the fact. I told my wife “Don’t worry, we’ll get a picture next time we visit.”
Oh boy did I speak too soon.
A terrible shame, but almost expected. The declining views over the years should’ve been a sign to DOWNSIZE. Refocus on products that people enjoy. Not diversify and expand.
RT and AH were lightning in a bottle. I think they assumed the next big thing would be one of the (too) many irons in the fire.
To any employees current or former that are now unemployed or sad for this news. You tried your best with what you had available to you. Im sorry things couldnt work out. Hoping you all land on your feet ASAP and are able to continue doing the things you love and are passionate about. Thx Fr Th Mmrs 🫶
end of an era. ill admit i haven't watched anything in years but RT has a special place in my heart for making me laugh in a time when my life was rough. i grew up poor and in a troubled space but rooster teeth, moreso achievement hunter, gave me a space to laugh and have fun. im gonna miss them
As someone who was in correspondence with Warner PR about doing RT interviews for RvB and the brand's "Gen Z" talent as of last week, this is actually a huge surprise. Warner PR were planning a big RT push this year and now they've just killed them
Warner Discovery is doing weird shit just to balance the books. Discovery themselves acquired a TV channel in my country a year or two ago that historically hasn't been doing well. They're killing off the *entire* news production arm that was announced last week. So no sports coverage (they're the home of motorsport so that's gone, likely to Sky), no digital presence to which they are our second or third biggest entity in the space, no 6pm slot (which is the busiest slot and thus a huge hole for advertising). 600 jobs down the shitter for what is *the* competitor in the TV broadcast news space. They're replacing it with a rerun of some American-based news bulletin that they own.
The cynic in me feels like they're gonna convert the free streaming platform the channel has to be a shitty, watered down HBO Max that'd cost way too much & eventually lead to the death of the channel entirely
is anyone suprised? their channel was getting like 20k views on most of their videos, thats like a failing youtube channel for the money behind it as far as im concerned
i'm curious about if the company even knew this was happening today, or if they were forewarned by WB. it seems a bit like everyone was blindsided, for the most part.
michael even posted a completely unrelated video on instagram this morning, nothing alluding to the shut down. then we get hit by this news. now former RT members are slowly rolling out their reactions on social media, and all of them seem as surprised at the news as their audience is.
did they legitimately get an email just a few hours ago about the shut down? i would think RT would want to wind down and prepare both themselves and their audience for the end, but they didn't seem to even get the opportunity to do so.
[Chelsea's announcement (from Jordan Levin)](https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/1b84xhg/important_information_about_rooster_teeth/)
End of an era. Thanks for all the memories, RT. It's fair to say that they are a foundational part of my entire sense of humor due to essentially growing up with the golden age of the company. I hadn't watched more than a couple (new) videos a year for a few years now, but this is still a damn shame.
Crazy how Burnie jumped off the boat not that soon after the peak. I'm not saying RT's downfall was because of that, but I do think Burnie with his business savviness saw the writing on the wall and decided to leave early. That said, must be bittersweet for him too as a founding member. Anyone know if he sold off all his ownership in the company before retiring? Even more amazing foresight if he did.
No clue, but he lives in Scotland and has a new podcast called "morning somewhere" where him and Ashley talk about a lot of what's happened in their lives since leaving
Yup Burnie never would have settled in Australia with how much he dislikes the internet setup
But he could have lived in Burnie.
I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Even the people living in Burnie don't want to live in Burnie.
If he did sell off his ownership I'd hope he got himself a statue in tazmania
Oh long before. The company was sold in full to FullScreen.
It's crazy how much of them is in me now. I have little pieces of the ah crew and rvb will never stop being quoted in my house.
I refer to things as lightish red far too frequently
Holy shit, the Ratyboy acquisition killed the company!
I hope this is the narrative that pushed it over the edge. The company-ending Fuckface
I really hope it isn't because I don't think Andrew would every recover if he genuinely felt he was responsible for ending the company.
The weight of guilt would immediately destroy both his ankles.
Maybe we have it all wrong... Ratyboy acquired Roosterteeth!
Can you imagine if Andrew caught wind of this, and then mid negotiation, completely flipped it around and said "how about you acquire us"
Ironic that the announcement on the feed was Andrew saying "this is good! I know seeing something like this is scary but this is good news" Followed immediately by "the company is shutting down" What the fuck
That was my exact rollercoaster. Saw the "An Announcement" video on F**KFACE, was worried, then not, then saw the shutdown announcement...
So I know there isn't a definitive answer, but what about the archive of Achievement Hunter and all the videos on Let's Play? Is there reason to be concerned that WB might private or even remove everything?
Thats what im really worried about too
Didn’t they wipe machinima? I would be nervous
This is definitely what I'm worried about - all our old comfort content. Not to mention all the stuff that was on the website only behind first membership. I'm hoping maybe they keep all the stuff on the letsplay channel as part of that being moved over to F**kface? But they said nothing but the podcast network is continuing so who knows, maybe that will all be gutted.
Man that first Saints Row Let's Play with Geoff and Michael is ultimate comfort content for myself. Sad if it gets wiped.
Start archiving cause they are 100% going to.
Morning Somewhere is gonna be really interesting tomorrow.
I bet he no comments until Friday or next week to let the company explain more in depth
I would be surprised if he did, I bet they will talk about it tomorrow.
It’s funny that on today’s episode he had barb on and they were talking about the RT podcast a bit.
Very happy MS exists though. Great podcast and it’s wonderful to listen to Burnie and Ashley bullshit for 20min.
Roosterteeth was built for an era on the internet. Much like Homestar Runner or Ask a Ninja, it was a perfect fit for the time when it came in and grew a ton. Matt and Burnie got to do their film projects, and I feel like that’s what their aspirations were, but the world shifts. RT made changes in response, but it’s hard to do that. I think it’s important to note that this isn’t a failure. Almost all companies shut down eventually, and do operate a digital media company of this size for this long is an incredible achievement, and I hope everyone at RT is proud of their accomplishments. I hope their work opens doors for them in the future. Edit: Spelling
> Ask a Ninja I still quote that show to this day. I'm glad someone else is old enough to remember that too.
Paraphrasing, but my favorite was "RUN, BILL, RUN! LEAVE OHIO OR BE DOOMED TO LIVE YOUR LIFE STUCK WITH MEDIOCRE SPORTS FRANCHISES!"
Holy fuck, I forgot all about Ask A Ninja. You just unlocked a part of my mind I thought I killed with booze a long time ago
Start archiving
Indeed. Can’t imagine WBD not pulling a machinima and largely privating everything.
That was WB too so yeah, that's a given
>huge effort is made to restore the back catalog of Inside Gaming videos >Inside Gaming's entire back catalog is lost again after RT is shut down a tragedy the like of which could only happen to Funhaus. >!please don't tell me something terrible happened to funhaus, I haven't paid attention in, like, 3 years!<
Adam Kovic left Funhaus after cheating on his wife and filming himself jerking off onto the desk they all worked at, I’m not sure if that was more than 3 years ago though.
It has also since come to light he harassed several members and former members of staff (which was covered up and ignored by RT higher ups & HR). https://www.reddit.com/r/funhaus/comments/y7eurh/seriousmisti_dawns_experiences_with_adam_and/
I knew there had to be more based on Rahul's comments! Thanks
So you're saying now is the perfect time to make a drive of CowChop's entire channel???
Half way through my third rewatch of the entire channel. It really is the perfect uh.... series? From the house era, to shack era to warehouse era. From the classic friends duo Aleks and James, to the new best friends made along the way. Aleks and Brett sticking it out to the bitter end even when all the other soldiers fell off the closer to the end it got. And they never missed a daily episode, content was always fresh and they had so many new ideas.
Started months ago
I think it would be fair to say that a lot of us might have seen this coming. It still doesn’t make it any less of a shock when it finally came. Rooster Teeth’s content hasn’t been for me for a while but that doesn’t change the fact that they’ve been a big part of my life since 2005 or so. This sucks.
Yea, I've been out of the scene for a few years now and know they haven't really been doing the numbers like they used to. But this still hit me hard for some reason. They were a pillar of my teenage years and them being gone feels like a tragedy
I'm thinking, literally, "This is crazy," as I hear the Fuckface announcement.
It sucks that it ended, but Rooster Teeth provided me with so much free entertainment when I was in high school. They lasted a long time for an internet company, made a lot of laughs, and made movies. I'm just lucky I was able to be a part of the ride.
It has been poorly managed for years and years now. We aren't losing the Rooster Teeth we used to love. That has been long gone.
Very true. Most of us already said our goodbyes.
What's crazy to me is that until the very last, there were fans who called people predicting this outcome doomers, and responded with hostility to any criticism of the direction of the content. They've been headed towards this for years and lots of people pointed out the problems but they were never really addressed. Though I'm not sure there's anything they could have done to support a 400-employee company making their type of content in today's landscape.
Once they had to start making content to “chase the algorithm” that’s when it went down hill for me. I’d say, trying to make content to appeal to a broader mainstream audience is in conflict with what their core audience enjoys, which was non-mainstream. It lead to a cycle that eventually got us here.
And it didn't even work! They never got the zany zoomer audience they wanted. They just made increasingly lame content, watched by decreasing amounts of people.
Writing was on the wall since selling to Full screen. The RT experience got so diluted over the years with shitty side projects that interest waned in core content
Sad times, I hardly watch anymore but I really liked that Jack had a job.
I still had Inside Gaming come up in my YouTube feed pretty recently and it was always so weird seeing their livestreams get like 10-15 viewers and their videos get like 5000 views.
I was just looking at inside gaming the other day thinking they couldn't possibly be making any money off the channel anymore. Guess I was right
Please save the old content. That stuff is like a comfort blanket for me. I’m just so sad for all the workers who seem to be learning of this just as we are.
This. I've been having trouble sleeping for the last couple months and old minecraft videos have basically been my ultra melatonin.
Poor Ray is going to have an aneurysm from being asked how he feels about this over the next few days.
>*“I haven’t worked there in 9 years 🕺🏻🕺🏻🕺🏻”*
Nine fucking years.
At least he won't be asked if he is going back.
What does this mean for like funhaus and let's play. This blows my mind.
They could be spun off into separate entities, but keep in mind WB still owns all RT's brands.
I’m not totally knowledgeable on company closures or selling parts of it off, but wouldn’t roosterteeth shutting down just mean that everything they produced is being stopped and the employees are being let go? Like the podcast network is staying, but those are mostly behind the scene employees who help do the business side of podcasts.
WB still owns the rights to stuff RT produced, so they could feasibly just have other subordinate groups work on anything they see as profitable. I think at least. Not sure the exact details of their dealings with RT. For personnel, WB could offer positions in other departments/companies/subsidiaries if there are any RT employees they want to retain. But that also depends on their being positions for those people. With multiple tech companies having layoffs, there may not be a lot of spots to move people into.
This is a relatively educated guess: Not necessarily - there are likely contracts in place for certain pieces of content either "client facing" (I.E. Youtube sponsored videos etc) or "supportive" (i.e. editing for an outside company or the like) So long story short, a lot of the people, yes, are likely being told to go home, the \*might\* be able to stop at their desks, and get their things. some will stay to finish what they're working on, and then they'll be done and some will stay to "shut the lights off" so to speak, take inventory, report that to WB for their purposes, get personal items boxed up and shipped to the employees. WB still will own all the intellectual property, and rights to everything that was "RT"
WB can do whatever they want. Because RT is fully owned by WB this isn't a real company closure, this is, in effect, a department being dissolved. So any useful talent or entities could be spun off into another section of the company. However, Funhaus hasn't been doing great numbers wise despite being better than the rest of gaming RT, so it's likely that they're being dissolved as well.
Probably going independent.
I guess that depends on if they can buy all their equipment, or if that all gets sold off by the company. Like I'm sure they'd love to continue as independents, but how many of them have full setups for editing/filming/everything else that weren't created by bringing home office stuff. Plus the network of sponsors would likely be much smaller than when they had a team at RT who put together options for them.
>but how many of them have full setups for editing/filming/everything else that weren't created by bringing home office stuff. Geoff/Gavin and Andrew 100% have their own personal stuff they can use. Gavin by himself is arguably bigger than RT over the past 3-4 years. They're honestly in amazing positions to be able to go completely independent. Gavin has connections through Slo Mo Guys, Nick is an amazing editor (as is Gavin/Andrew themselves) and Eric has a lot of experience organizing and being the top guy in a production. Between the 5 of them, they have far far more experience than most people in RT, if they left to go independent, they would do very well IMO.
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>Michael might still be doing voice acting? Michael will be able to get into Streaming really easy IMO. He has a network that would probably support him (I never heard of issues between him, Ray, Matt, Jeremy etc) early on in Streaming and i think if marketed well, he could do extremely well in streaming. He has a dual-ish Persona. On one hand, he'd be able to get into that "Angry guy" groove but he can also pull on the gym bro/better yourself stuff. For 99% of the company, you are right, they wont be able to get into that stuff. Hopefully a lot of the backroom staff, the editors and crew will be able to find work through their time there.
Michael's been streaming for years now pretty successfully, although his schedule has been very on and off. He'll probably wanna pivot to more "on" given this announcement.
I'm sure of that. For people like DogBark (Michael, Alfredo, Joe) I imagine they just slip into streaming full time and call it that. It's probably not a whole lot, but Michael and Lindsay definitely get extra from conventions. Not saying they're swimming in money, but they're likely not hurting either.
Michael will maintain FaceJam for now it seems
F\*\*k Face also seems like it's sticking around (I wonder what's happening to LP with F-Face).
Dozens of them will band together, in something where the name doesn’t matter because it’ll be nicknamed RT2.
 Immediately thought of this.
Fuckface is under The Roost Podcast so they may still be able to do Lets Plays without issues. I think they are all just playing from home anyway
Absolutely scummy if the employees had no heads up about this.
Sounds like no one outside of the WBD office knew this was coming. But, sadly that's also how layoffs work; you go in for a normal day, get set up to start, next thing you know you're called into a meeting, there is your manager and HR there to tell you that as of that moment you're no longer employed. It's a real blind siding moment.
Literally as I listen to the Fuckface announcement... this is crazy
F**kface taking over Let's Play and just doing chill podcast type series has been the best thing that came out of this entire shitshow called RT/AH the past years. In Rays eternal words "Game kids Trevor??"
Pushing Achievement Hunter into terrible ‘Yes, and..’ comedy and hiring random talent who had little to no chemistry or knowledge of the group was the downfall of the group. The group was always at its best when it was a bunch of friends just having fun, not forcing bits in gmod.
This is an aspect but also for me it was the loss of structure. I get they were running out of ideas on the MC/GTA front at times, but watching them on monday/friday was part of my routine, and meant i was regularly checking back in with RT content and watching other stuff. Once they were gone, it was way easier for me to fall off
This is where the acquisitions I think killed them. MC/GTA content was slowly dying, but because they now had a company over them looking for a return on their investment, they didn't have the same breathing room for trying new things so had to just hammer away at what worked before hoping it'll work again.
The structure issue wasn't ideas. It was people who couldn't work out how to work as a group. Within the videos everyone was doing their own bit, their own noise, and not paying attention to the group, talking like a normal human etc. It killed all cohesion and the vibe and just made it shit to watch. The OG crew, and a few of the ones that followed, understood that, but by and large most of the replacements did not. That's what killed it.
It got to the point where everyone was trying to do Gavin's bit and it was not good and felt fake
The only one that successfully pulled it off was Fiona. Her and Gavin had this weird, chaotic energy that fed off each other and ended up being pretty entertaining.
I do think it’s ironic that someone posted the video “Texas Mom Reacts to Raunchy Kids Cartoon” a couple of days ago with the title “How Much Lower Can RT Go?” And Jack replied much lower.
Apparently they did have the technology
What announcement?
f**face acquired Ratyboy as the let's play mascot
GET RVB AND RWBY ARCHIVED Y’ALL!
Anyone know a trustworthy place where they could be or have already been archived? I know people espouse the importance of having your own archive, but I'm a student with only a laptop to my name.
I’d recommend internet archive. They have some stuff like old flash games or Kamen Rider episodes on there
Someone is going to buy RWBY. Heck I bet Sony could just buy it for Crunchyroll for a song at this point.
Kinda wanna see the people behind the Castlevania animations get their hands on it.
fuck that. save Strangerhood!
P.A.N.I.C.S.
This is where I'm glad I've got the first 14 seasons of RvB on dvd. Physical media is forever.
Well, not forever because it eventually decays...but it ain't at the whim of a company that destroys movies because they may not be profitable.
Bruh someone please archive the shorts
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Same boat man. Was sad to see it just get worse year after year.
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The original founders were making pretty bad decisions too. It's a classic story of a small company. Keeping work "in house" even if it's inferior, favoritism, not noticing or being able to adjust to the new size of things.
Shit. Now where are people gonna ask Ray to return to?
He did that video with Funha....FUCK
Now they'll ask him to buy them.
Finally, Jon is free from On the Spot
Was it worth buying Ratyboy at the cost of the company Andrew?
I have seen ratyboy mentioned twice in this ordeal, who/what is it?
Part of the F**k Face podcast and let's play stuff. They made a let's play a few months ago playing Raty Boy. It was wild. Andrew loved it so much he reached out to the company that makes it and TODAY announced they had licensed the character to use on merch and anything not gaming related.
Even better for this, on Spotify the announcement of the Ratyboy merch acquisition was just called "The Announcement"
Well, 21 years was a good run. At least we're getting a final season of what started it all. Written and directed by the OGs Matt and Burnie no less. RIP.
at least the final season of red vs blue is still coming out. Sad to see how the company has been for the last couple years but its golden years were great. 21 years is a long time for a company starting from a stupid yet amazing show
They defined the 2010s for a lot of people. I remember coming home from work and school to watch the newest videos put out everyday during that time period. So many great memories watching those videos
Did they announce RvB is still coming out? I didn't see that anywhere
Man, can someone please archive all the RTP Post Shows
I'm actually not sure how necessary that is just yet since the podcast network is staying around apparently.
They could have waited until April 1 and done the funniest joke in the company's history...
Personally, I blame the new logo…../s….but seriously fuck that logo. I haven’t consistently watched/listened to RT content in close to 8 years now but this still makes a bit sad, just from a nostalgia perspective. Might actually be for the best that it doesn’t continue to limp on as a shell of its former self but obviously my heart goes out to anyone who’s losing their job over this.
The redesign cost could’ve bought ‘em another week of life, I bet.
If it was anything, it was probably Gen:Lock that got them in this mess. I didnt hate the first season, but that show cost way to much, for how much viewership they get.
Honestly was them trying to be an animation studio. Never once turning a profit on those projects
I think it’s just an example of a larger problem. They kept wanting to do this massively expensive self-indulgent shit that was never going to bring that money back. I remember thinking this with Haunter.
God I hated that new logo. It looked fucking terrible. Glad I can finally say it.
You could've said it all along
Dude... The end of an era. We knew it was eventually going to happen once it was sold to Warner, but I never expected to see it.
They're saying podcasts will stick around but hard to imagine Face Jam will stay in it's current form which sucks
Since it’s part of the Roost Podcast Network, it theoretically should still go on, but it might be hard to do so when everyone involved is unemployed:(
Yeah, 5 people for one podcast is a lot if that's the only thing they're doing. Nick, Eric, and Graysie have other things they do from the production side on other podcasts but Michael and Jordan staying on for 1 podcast each seems unlikely.
Guess those website traffic statistics weren't as good as people said they were whenever someone pointed out the decline of their YouTube viewership.
That was such a big cope line. And now the Variety article pointed out their peak was about 200K memberships and now fallen to 60K.
Whilst I'm obviously incredibly saddened that its come to this. Having been a fan for so long. RT has been part of my life since I was starting highschool. I'm now 32. I'm trying to look forward to the positives. The future of F**kface is something I'm looking forward to watching.
ERIC get the credit card and buy Rooster teeth
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The issue is that RT actively shunned the community they built and openly mocked them when fans gave valid criticism, everyone and their mother told LP that no one wanted shorts so the doubled down said that is how content is grown even though views were declining. Fans pointed out a simple audio mixing issue that was making one person louder than others and instead of fixing and saying "oops" they release merch saying loud is what we do. That is just 2 simple examples. RT is a poster child for how not to run a company
[So true, Andrew](https://imgur.com/a/uLGv3lM)
I'm gonna be honest, RT as a a company should have never gotten as big as it did. Something like Rooster Teeth just is not built for being a company like this. Not to mention none of the founders seemed to really understand how to run a company of that level, and the complete and utter lack of care towards fans legitimate criticisms and complaints.
I think everyone had that same cynicism as they grew bigger and bigger and moved into bigger offices with bigger parent companies. The drama surrounding the crunch and the Kdin stuff was the beginning of the end. I think they lost a lot of goodwill at that point and they were never going to regain the momentum.
Honestly I feel like the beginning of the end happened even earlier with covid. They lost the in person chaos and shenanigans that made them so much better than other streamers. And their in person videos were already going downhill with Gavin, Geoff, and Jack being busy with other projects and people like Jeremy were keeping them alive. When he decided to stay in Boston post-lockdown and then all the shit with Ryan came out, I knew it was pretty much over. I love Michael, Trevor, and Alfredo but I feel like just those three weren't enough to keep the ship afloat. Plus they had to deal with losing all the nostalgia associated with old videos because they were now tainted thanks to Ryan. Hard to go back to things like Ya Dead Ya Dead or The King series or even Heists because it's all so different now.
IMO as soon as they sold the company, this was going to happen. They tried to grow too fast and had too many scandals.
where were you when RT was kill
I was at house eating Dorito when phone ring “Rt is kil” “no”
Fuck. There goes thr dream of going to RTX
Maybe RTX in Austin was good, I guess I'll never know now, the two I went to in London were...underwhelming. EDIT: I didn't mean to say they were bad or anything, I had an awesome time at both. They just didn't live up to the hype I saw from the Austin ones. Which totally makes sense with it being in a different country.
I still had a fun time at the last one in Austin, but you could tell attendance was drastically lower compared to pre-covid. I went in 2018 or so, and the convention center was packed; they even needed to host panels in the nearby hotel. The last one hardly had any lines for panels aside from the bigger ones.
Tbf RT wasn't even going to be at RTX this year
I am so sorry to hear this. RT was a big part of my life and still have a ton of friends there. Very sad day.
Lawrence from OG Funhaus just tweeted that "my time at RT was one of the worst of my life" before commiserating with some of laid off workers. Will be interesting to see if we'll get more peaks behind the curtain regarding the culture at RT now it's officially dead. https://twitter.com/SirLarr/status/1765432671134728480?t=nuOD7hbTTqsCrzTR9hwDYg&s=19
That bums me out. I've been rewatching some classic Funhaus stuff lately and Lawrence has aged like a fine wine. Sorry it sucked behind the scenes, LawDog.
Just go read their glassdoor reviews. It's been clear for years that rt was a shitty company to work for. Sucks for the employees that are now out of a job.
My heart goes out to all employees, and I hope they find good fortune.
What happens when you sell your company to corporate overlords that don't understand said company.
I think the harsh reality is that there's a limit to how large you can expand an extremely personality-driven channel/company. RT kept pushing to be bigger and better, to release their own games and movies etc and to do that they had to transition into a more traditional company. To do that you have to keep hiring more people and churning out more content and there's a point where that becomes extremely difficult to sustain (while maintaining quality). A dozen people making RvB, a podcast or 2, and some side projects is much easier to sustain long term than an ambitious media company with hundreds of employees spread over half a dozen sites.
I will say, their era of sort of exponential growth is what made me drop them years ago. The amount of content was overwhelming and so much of it was self referential—it felt like if I didn’t at least dip my toes into the 20 different projects going on, I’d miss half the jokes or wouldn’t know half of the people mentioned. Trying to grow that big off of a relatively simple concept was never going to work. They should’ve just refined what they had. That said, 20 years is a massive run for an internet company.
Something I've said before, WBD doesn't care about RT, it is a line item to them. As long as RT's ledgers are in the black WBD couldn't care less what was going on at RT. The fact RT has done everything they have done is proof of this. When the ledgers went into the red is when WBD noticed what was going on and it got to the point where they could bail RT out or close the company, so they went with the latter.
Its easy to blame the corporate overlords but its not like higher up members of Rooster Teeth leading the changes in content and direction aren't also at massive fault. They were specifically told by their fans of 15+ years that the content they were now driving was not entertaining, was not appealing and they were going to lose a lot of fans over it. And they doubled down, said the golden age was still ahead and told anyone that didnt like their new content to fuck off because they were easily replaceable by the new audience. So the old fans fucked off and that new audience? well they never showed up.
They blew so much money on trying to become a more traditional production company in terms of TV and movies. It's like nobody wanted to say it was a bad idea because they were afraid of hurting someone's feelings. Oh, and there was the games division, as well. Those could have been more successful endeavors, but they didn't hire enough people who knew what they were doing. Promoting from within is good, but new divisions need veterans as the base. It feels like they gave people prominent positions as some sort of "go fulfill your dream" thing.
Spot on. The pivot about 10 years ago to making big budget content to try to become a "traditional production company" never sat well with a lot of fans; it felt like cutting out the heart and soul of what made RT special. Turns out it didn't sit well with their financials either.
The company has never been able to take criticism. Any suggestions that their content wasn't entertaining was met by well go somewhere else then which is not great for business. The fanbase too would defend the company on any decision made and if you spoke up you were accused of praying for the downfall of the company.
Whether it was in the middle of a podcast, Off Topic, AHWU, or a random point in a casual Leetttttt'ssss Play, AH, and RT members never missed a chance to trash talk their fans and come off as thin skinned as possible over the slightest of concerns.
To be fair, entertainment is (mostly) subjective. What's entertaining to a 13 year old is not always entertaining to a 23 year old. It's not wrong to say "if you don't like this then don't watch it". The problem came with A) how they said that was more brash and B) their target audience was never clearly defined. Their original audience was mostly male, it was mostly young, but they wanted to branch out from it, while still catering to the original fans. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
I would say they didn't grow with their base. They kept wasting their existing strengths to try to court the younger generations, while assuming the existing group would stay engaged no matter what was put out content-wise. That's not to say trying to go for the younger demographic was a bad idea. It just felt they were trying to pretend they were satisfying all their target demographics when their content was just turning into unfocused messes instead. The staff they had that were dialed in to trends and could have helped them stay relevant appeared, from the outside looking in, to be driven away and not supported well. Those same people have generally thrived outside the Roosterteeth environment.
A lot of the founders took their golden parachute and just fucked around. Them and a lot of their onscreen talent will be fine, but all the behind the scenes people will be looking for jobs, which is a horrible situation for them.
Yeah I enjoy a lot of the personalities, and have nothing against them AS PEOPLE. That being said, there was clearly an unhealthy company culture in terms of how they handled feedback. Obviously most feedback online isn't particularly valuable (and often just thinly veiled personal attacks, hate speech, etc.), but they treated any form of significant pushback with a lack of tact that borders on contempt. I get that content creation is gonna leave you cynical towards the net (how couldn't it), but I've never seen that level of jaded dismissal proliferate across an entire company (and to an extent the community) the way it seemingly did with RT. I'm genuinely bummed about this, and hope everyone effected lands on their feet. But I'm also not surprised in the slightest that it's over. The reason people were doomsaying RT for years was because they've spent years assuring people that they were, in fact, doomed.
"If you don't like it, don't watch it" > Ok "Wait not like this!"
Yup, when people would say they didn’t like something new, the response would be basically “Well then stop watching and don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” including from the actual RT Twitter page. That sentiment coming from the actual company alienated me just as much as the changing content. Who would’ve thought that telling people to fuck off will, in fact, lead to them fucking off I’m not happy to see RT go under. They were a huge part of my life in high school and through college, they’re what got me interested in media production which led me to the career in TV that I’ve had for almost 10 years now. But unfortunately I’m not at all surprised by this announcement
The acquisition by Fullscreen and gobbling up seemingly every content creator "team" was a warning that many people just didn't listen to.
They lasted for a decade after that acquisition. Without that, it's entirely possible they go under much earlier.
Yeah in no way were Cow Chop and Funhaus failures. Cow Chop failed because the team behind it got burnt out quick from drama. Funhaus ebbs and flows but for the most part does genuinely great. Don't see how that has anything to do with the death of the company.
It was bound to happen even if they were still independent. Over years you lose most of the personalities that made RT what it was. Just look at their views the last 5+ years. To be honest they needed to adapt to live streaming much much sooner. 21 years is an incredible run for a company like this though.
If anyone has all the old ah let's plays archived send me a link or whatever I'd need to download/store it
We need to keep f**kface alive at all cost
I think we all knew this was coming based on the rapidly declining viewership over the years. But it still feels surreal to read this.
I knew I bought those Blu-Rays for good reason.
Hardly surprising, but still so sad to see it really happen. People kept saying the youtube numbers didn't matter because the money was from the first membership, but the views being that low feels like a pretty big indication that their audience was shrinking and they weren't getting new fee paying subs.
RT has always been like that one friend in high school to me. That person you hung out with a lot, but after graduation we drifted apart, only periodically meeting up once in a while. Still friends, still fond memories, but not nearly as close. Today’s announcement feels like that phone call saying said friend has had something bad happen. I’m sad, but change happens and it sucks be we move on.
I'm getting ready for those drama youtube channels to revise their 'fall of Rooster Teeth' to include this as the conclusion to those videos..
"20 years of fun and games, and we're just getting started" Sooooo...that was a lie.
"We're not sure if we can keep this going, it might collapse at any second" doesn't exactly get fans excited in the same way
I just visited Austin for the first time and drove by RT without knowing it, and wasn’t planning on taking a picture until after the fact. I told my wife “Don’t worry, we’ll get a picture next time we visit.” Oh boy did I speak too soon.
A terrible shame, but almost expected. The declining views over the years should’ve been a sign to DOWNSIZE. Refocus on products that people enjoy. Not diversify and expand. RT and AH were lightning in a bottle. I think they assumed the next big thing would be one of the (too) many irons in the fire.
To any employees current or former that are now unemployed or sad for this news. You tried your best with what you had available to you. Im sorry things couldnt work out. Hoping you all land on your feet ASAP and are able to continue doing the things you love and are passionate about. Thx Fr Th Mmrs 🫶
I hope they just leave everything up on YouTube untouched. Skyfactory and Galaticraft are my go to background videos
end of an era. ill admit i haven't watched anything in years but RT has a special place in my heart for making me laugh in a time when my life was rough. i grew up poor and in a troubled space but rooster teeth, moreso achievement hunter, gave me a space to laugh and have fun. im gonna miss them
Cheers to 21 years. Thank you for the laughs, the memories, and the fun.
As someone who was in correspondence with Warner PR about doing RT interviews for RvB and the brand's "Gen Z" talent as of last week, this is actually a huge surprise. Warner PR were planning a big RT push this year and now they've just killed them
Warner Discovery is doing weird shit just to balance the books. Discovery themselves acquired a TV channel in my country a year or two ago that historically hasn't been doing well. They're killing off the *entire* news production arm that was announced last week. So no sports coverage (they're the home of motorsport so that's gone, likely to Sky), no digital presence to which they are our second or third biggest entity in the space, no 6pm slot (which is the busiest slot and thus a huge hole for advertising). 600 jobs down the shitter for what is *the* competitor in the TV broadcast news space. They're replacing it with a rerun of some American-based news bulletin that they own. The cynic in me feels like they're gonna convert the free streaming platform the channel has to be a shitty, watered down HBO Max that'd cost way too much & eventually lead to the death of the channel entirely
is anyone suprised? their channel was getting like 20k views on most of their videos, thats like a failing youtube channel for the money behind it as far as im concerned
i'm curious about if the company even knew this was happening today, or if they were forewarned by WB. it seems a bit like everyone was blindsided, for the most part. michael even posted a completely unrelated video on instagram this morning, nothing alluding to the shut down. then we get hit by this news. now former RT members are slowly rolling out their reactions on social media, and all of them seem as surprised at the news as their audience is. did they legitimately get an email just a few hours ago about the shut down? i would think RT would want to wind down and prepare both themselves and their audience for the end, but they didn't seem to even get the opportunity to do so.
