Got injured in an accident? You could be click away from a claim worth millions. You can start your claim now with Morgan & Morgan at www.forthepeople.com/JOON without leaving your couch. Remember, it's free unless you win. Correction #1: Rooster Teeth was acquired by Fullscreen in 2014, I misread the line and said 2024. Correciton #2: Though it may have been partnered with Rooster Teeth for a period,The Slo Mo Guys are independent of Rooster Teeth.
Watching something you loved or still love die a slow and painful death while it's scrambling to do everything to prevent that is just... so sad. I was never a huge Rooster Teeth fan back in the day but I would watch their stuff when it popped up on my RUclips recommended every so often. They felt like they were going to be here forever, you know?
@@shioq. exactly what I'm thinking, always found rooster teeth annoying ever since I was a kid back in 2014, nothing at all was lost with the downfall of their channel
Having the video of them playing halo one last time be their most viewed content in years really shows how distant from their core audience they became. What a slap in the face.
Yep, exactly. I honestly slowly stopped watching them once Ray left. After he left in that minecraft let’s play video, I had a feeling things were gonna change drastically. He felt like the glue holding them together and after he left the interactions just weren’t as funny and seemed more forced. I felt the Minecraft lets play was their golden era. They had RvB, Minecraft lets play, worms, and some other things and then they just stopped or quality got worse and then they started bringing on other people who just weren’t funny, had no personality or were actually just d bags off screen and it really showed that they had forgotten the people who actually allowed their channel to flourish
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XT I agree it's sad to see as it turned into something that was a bunch of friends playing video games and making fun animations into just down right awful content with random people that no one found slight interest in.
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XTAchievement Hunter was still in its peak after he left. Especially with so many memorable moments with Jeremy and Alfredo in the mix. It started going downhill around 2019, then completely dwindled once Covid hit.
They should have had a video of a bunch of random non white people who no one knows or cares about playing Halo for one last time, cause that's what it turned into.
I always count Ray leaving as the first sign of trouble, even if most of it was his own desire for freedom, his note of things become more corporate was telling.
He got off the Titanic to get on a kayak and paddle to England. And there were people telling him he wasn't going to make it. I wonder what they'd think now.
@@Hyrule409 Yeah, I vaguely remember people saying his first stream would be his high point (especially with Noch's huge donation) followed by a steady decline. But he's still doing what he loves with no end in sight. Seeing him play Minecraft again with Nags and Chibidoki without saying he is about to fall asleep was nostalgic (especially with Chibi making old AH jokes)
Dude is living his best life and it shows. He's streaming when he wants to he's got a beautiful family (wife and dogs) his own successful merch line. So happy for the creator of Mr diddles. @@seki108
Ray knew RT was slowly becoming less about Friends and new Friends having a great time, and more a modern day sjw woke dei liberal marxist fest of employees who joined RT with the intent of being thin skinned and causing trouble to "get money". Liberalism killed RT
I remember thinking at the time that it was so stupid for Ray to leave. I mean, Rooster Teeth was a reliable source of income and going to streaming seemed like rolling the dice. He'd definitely have a strong start, but would he be able to hold onto that audience? It seemed like an unnecessary risk. Plus, who wouldn't want to work in an environment as *amazing as Rooster Teeth? *Citation needed And time proved me wrong. Ray is still a very successful streamer, and Rooster Teeth went the way of the dinosaur, with its reputation in tatters. Maybe holding together barely, but still badly damaged all the same.
To split the hair: It wasn't just that they became different, it's that they became worse. At least in practice, there was no tradeoff when Rooster Teeth went from indie to corporate, just things lost. Many good things lost.
Rooster Teeth as a company has been dead for years, and I'm not sad to see it finally rest. It's like seeing a zombified family member be put down, there's sadness for missing what it once was, but relief in knowing nothing is puppeting its body anymore. That said, I'm terribly sorry for the amount of people who have lost their jobs, and I hope everyone manages to land on their feet. Rest in peace Rooster Teeth.
This is honestly the best way to describe it. I still look back on RTAA stuff. And I mourn for all the great Monty Oum projects we never got to see. But after awhile, you just had to acknowledge that it was there. Not really living. Just there. Now that it's gone we can properly appreciate it for what it was and appreciate its legacy. A bittersweet end. Sad. But at least now we have closure.
This Also screw them for destroying Monty's vision by firing his wife and a few of the writers Rwby may have not always been a quality series but the first 3 volumes you can feel the passion and that I respect
That's the problem. All these nerds don't know how to make money. All they know how to do is prank, act like children & write a joke. You can't keep that up for life. You need a real business strategy.
"Hey, you ever wonder why we're here?" - Opening line of the first RvB. "Why we were here" - the title of their very last podcast where everyone got a chance to say goodbye.
Hearing Geoff's laugh again towards the end of the video brought me back to the days when I first found Roosterteeth, it still brings me back to those better times.
He finally, after all these years, got what he wanted. His speech at RTX one year about just wanting to hang out with his friends again was heartbreaking. I'm so glad for him that this happened
Watching him breakdown was hard. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to see something you helped build with friends reach the peak and then end in such a lackluster fashion.
Man was the punching bag of the company for the last couple of years. That podcast where he's alone talking about the layoffs that had just happened and just breaks down, nobody deserves to go through it. Plus with all the shit that happened in his personal life makes me really hope he manages to hit the ground running.
I haven’t really kept up with rt for many many years, but even back when he like just started going through his divorce I’ve always just wanted Geoff to do well. He’s such a genuinely good person
@@justinjunker1399 Its hard seeing him be so depressing and miserable Rewatching early 2010s RT videos and lets plays he always had the most iconic laugh out of the OG 6 Its really sad to see a group of friends just drift apart and a once passion project become a soulless company with no charm or well soul (But man is it hard to rewatch some old stuff with Ryan in it)
Almost. Machinima ended up deleting their entire social media presences, while Rooster Teeth still have their RUclips/Twitter/Whatever social media still up. Still, I can't imagine these staying up for any longer.
@@Nightwing690 "why is Warner Bros. doing literally anything they do?" is the better question. from letting Velma see the light of day but scraping a movie with new Hex Girls music to letting the Flash movie with Miller exist but locking Batgirl in the vault. oh, can't forget Coyote vs. Acme getting shelved even though test screenings went super well. everyone is asking what the heck Warner Bros. is doing, including Warner Bros. themselves
This was never about selling out. It was that the company went woke and lost everyone they originally were made for. They used to be irreverent, funny and unconcerned with others opinions and then they became a bunch of pu$$*&$.
They would've failed even if they never went corporate. What killed the company was vanity, at its core, and I saw that root take hold near the start of the video podcasts with Burnie insulting swaths of people and telling anyone that complained to leave. Calling Kdin slurs and substituting slurs for in videos happened while they were still a small company too. Nothing could have ever saved RT from failing; its founders and core employers were arrogant from the second they got an actual studio
Sure I felt bad for Geoff crying, but RT itself was a piece of shit for quite a while... I remember reading about how poorly they treated their animators (and how many animator communities knew to stay far away from them) and just how they really didn't care about the "little people" when things had been going well for the company overall. You reap what you sow.
as soon as you go from a personality driven channel, with a singular/bunch of people doing stuff they love into a giant team of producers, editors, writers, it's over as far as I'm concerned
The problem is that they didn't look after a lot of their good personalities, which lead to them leaving and getting replaced with average personalities.
Who could've guessed? Corporate morons ruin art? No wayyyyy. Unbelievable. I cannot believe that a board room full of producers was not able to create genuine and entertaining content. What a shock. I am in shock.
It's fascinating how the segment at the very end captured the essence of Rooster Teeth in its glory days. Just a bunch of friends sitting around a couch, laughing and having fun. That's how it all started. That was the heart of Rooster Teeth. It's sad that it's over but that was the one sweet moment in this bitter spiral.
Quite prescient. The further removed they came from their original core appeal, the more directionless and unidentifiable they became. In other words, there’s evolving your content and then there’s losing your touch.
I stopped watching RT when it became annoyingly corporate. I think it's a fine line to walk but I'm surprised that no one in management picked up that it had lost its identity.
@@floatinghamstick It's really easy to miss stuff like that when its done gradually over 20 years. That's how people go from skinny to really fat too. Its a new normal, and another new normal, again and again, until you've strayed so far off the path you thought you were on and now you're lost.
@@hoosierdeddy92 I love Ray's "Loser you're a loser" reference Also when that message "Brownman has left the game" I think that was the end of RT at least AH I do like Jeremy but the OG 6 man nothing can beat their chemistry
I got the idea to separate from the name achievement hunter because they wanted to do something they enjoyed but then to just lapse back into playing games on dogbark felt so pointless
The fact that Camp Camp returned after a long hiatus only to die after 4 rushed episodes and have it's studio shut down still hurts. Nothing but tears here 😔
@@APunishedManNamed2 Jason Liebrecht was very close to Vic's voice IMO. It really only became noticeable when he yelled/screamed, which is understandable, holding a voice that isn't your natural for yelling/screaming is exceptionally difficult.
@@RusticRonnie Funhaus died when Adam Kovic was removed and Bruce Greene left to do his own thing. James was never bad (honestly his banter with his wife Elyse was some of the funnier parts of the series) but those three were the foundation that Funhaus stood on and grew from. Early Demo Disks with the three of them were always the peak of what Funhaus ever was.
It was really Adam. When Adam did his shit he drove a lot of people away. Bruce and Lawrence admitted they left because they reported Adam in the past and it was ignored. I have no idea why James and Elyse stayed, they could do so much more.
I met Bernie once, several years ago at the only E3 I was able to attend. I was a big hopeful about my youtube channel (Darkovika Gaming, this one was a second project, I've retired from both projects), and I found out RoosterTeeth was doing shoutouts for youtube channels on their livestream, so I wandered over, and Bernie saw me hovering and like popped up and was liek "Hey! You a youtuber?" And was just the nicest, friendliest, kindest dude I'd ever mt. I ended up being moved to the sideline with some Funhaus guys, and Blaine- working lights- explicitly told us, "I WILL FLAG YOU when you are about to go on. PAY ATTENTION" and I remember seeing him out of the corner of my eye waving frantically at us just as the lights hit us and we entirely missed our cue hahaha. Bernie was cracking up on the side, Blaine was smashing his face with a clipboard, and we looked goofy as heck. I popped off camera a few minutes later, and Bernie was all smiles and laughter and told me I did great. I'll never forget that experience. I wish it could have always been that vibe, always, with the company as a whole
Burnie was one of my favorite people at RT. He was hard headed and dang ignorant a lot, but he had such a way he went about things that made him enjoyable just to listen to. Him leaving was the nail in the coffin for RT. He prolly saw where things were going and ran. Can't blame him.
@@PodreyJenkin138 As someone who has literally listened/watched every single episode of the RT Podcast up until Burnie left, twice.... Yes he was. He would sit there and sit on his words until proven otherwise, pretending to know what he was talking about. It's not a bashing of him, as often he would eat his words gracefully if proven wrong, and majority of the time he wouldn't take it that seriously regardless, but he absolutely had many ignorant moments lol
Studied Mass Communication in college with the idea I might be able to move to Austin and try my luck with them. Had a group of friends who felt the same. My life moved on from that and in a lot of ways I wish I had tried, but I’m so glad to be older, wiser, and with a steady job.
No, the mistake was trying to become an animation studio and then after three seasons shitting on Monty Oum's legacy by going woke and pandering to the weirdest and most unhinged parts of the show's fandom.
@@TheDancingHyena He's talking about how they shit all over Adam's character and the plot for the sake of lesbian shippers. Bumblebee was undeniably shoved into the show to appease a small demographic which destroyed the power scaling, Blake's romance plotline with Sun, Adam's motivations by becoming a stupid edgy yandere (and subsequently the White Fang), and Yang's trauma arc. Not to mention they inserted lesbian lizard girl who IMMEDIATELY replaced Adam in his new forced role as a scorned lover. It was a serious indication of the writing's incoming car crash. It's like the writer's wondered what it would be like to drive the series off a cliff.
@@TheDancingHyena if you pay attention to alot of beloved things dying in more recent years its most likely because they went woke, or atleast thats the easy to use buzzword for it. Progressives that hold virtue signaling and pushing politics above all else, and these types also tend to have no imagination or creative bones in their body, and often create enviroments that stifle genuine creativity in entertainment.
It's also very telling how their last few months of videos are stuff like "You can't make horror movies in the hood" really playing up the blackness with only the black cast on thumbnails for weeks straight. You can literally smell the pandering desperation like, "Look how much we care about black people! We're woke!" It's even more obvious when it's followed by a thumbnail with 95% white employees. Woke people never seem to be able to grasp that forced lame representation makes minorities like us look lame. Too busy trying to be saviors to see that.
It's easy they are a scorched earth firm they'll drain you of money and not win you anything then take most of the money. They've ruined their reputation and can only advertise thru stupid youtubers
Rooster teeth was a place I dreamed to work at. They directly got me into wanting to be an animator which led to me wanting to be a filmmaker. I would not be on my current track of life without them. It’s heartbreaking that they are gone but I will always treasure the memories Achievement hunter, RWBY, Res Vs Blue, funhaus etc.
Likewise. I worked on a few projects with them in their games division and was almost hired on there in 2018, but the project (a RWBY based CCG) fell through in the middle stages when they went a different direction with it. The fact that so many people were inspired by and wanted to work at the company was amazing, but it was also a big part of the company's downfall, especially during the animation scandal. People who had grown up watching RT were willing to work there in conditions and for pay that were well below industry standard simply *because* it was RT, and the company definitely abused that reputation.
@@gloverfox9135 I went to RTX a few times and during the QnA panels with the founders, Burnie would always preemptively answer the question of "How do I get a job at RoosterTeeth?" His answer to this question was always "Make your own RoosterTeeth. Start a podcast, make some animations or skits with your friends, or anything else to get your love of creativity out into the world."
The first death bell for RT was when Monty died. The second death bell was when the controversies with the main staff came in. The third and final death bell was when Gen Lock came out it was a waste of money. And it put the final nail in the RT coffin
I feel like Ray leaving also was a bell in that machine. Monty dying, Ryan’s accusations and Ray leaving really hit all the points for me to see where they were headed
@@Diogo85 The entirety of the world and major plot points (while he was alive) was brought forth and directed by him, as while as the lead animator/chorographer for both RWBY AND RvB
I remember the first Rage Quit of Superman, because I had been watching Rooster Teeth for a little while and the intro followed by the anger was so jarring because it was so unlike anything they had done. It was a great time, I miss those days of RT
Ray saying "You can't be mad it isn't Thursday." to this very day on his streams is in reference to Ragequit which were regularly released(and sometimes recorded) on Thursdays.
Honestly proud of Geof for saying "I'm not that guy anymore. I can't do this again. I'm drowning here." Geoff has been drowning for a while, and it feels like no one else at the company cared. Which is fucking vile wjen you remember this company was started by him and his "friends". That last clip of them playing halo together made me wanna cry. He loves those guys to this very fuckin day. I hope he gets better friends. I hope the community stands up for him now. I hope he is able to have a healthy hppy relationship with his family. We love you, Geoff. For better and for worse, you were the father figure a lot of kids craved. You raised an entire generation of nerds. Stand proud man, you earned it.
I remember Geoff speaking from the heart and everyone of his friends laughing at him. He stayed humble while everyone around him went up their own asses.
@@floatinghamstick The problem is that this isn't the first time he's come on a podcast to weep and cry for whenever a controversy happens. I don't think it's malicious or manipulative on his end I think it's just that he's kind of used as a shield by rooster teeth because people have an attachment to him since he's one of the co-founders
@@noblegalifreyan4551 honestly, I think you're giving RT management too much credit. Considering how uncoordinated and terrible they were, I wouldn't be surprised if Geoff put his hand up to handle it and RT management were just happy to have a patsy to do the work.
When you sell your successful company, your company loses its soul. They might not have been making much money when they started, but sacrifices are always made to build a small company into something great. After the sale, the only sacrifice left is the company itself.
I might’ve been gone for years like many others, but if you’re a true fan of the originals, there’s no way you didn’t just bawl your eyes out hearing and seeing Geoff and others like Jack and Barbara be unable to keep it together. This was my first time seeing that and it’s just shattered me for all the good memories that’ve come rushing back. Wherever they are and whatever they do, I wish nothing but utter success and joy for the rest of their lives and I thank them all for giving that dumb kid discovering the internet for the first time all the fond memories to the man/adult that kid grew up into to look back on. LLLLLLLLET’S STOP ♥️ (R.I.P. The prime days)
The company failed due to many, many small mistakes over the course of years that for some reason nobody that was a decision maker at the company ever identified and course corrected on but an average fan could see was a mistake from a mile away. The best visualization of that was the homepage of the website going from an incredible community feed a decade ago to turning into the most generic-looking Netflix lookalike slop I've ever seen. Also when they started hiring at an insane rate at the 636 office to the point they had to move into an aircraft hanger, I knew it was a wrap. They should have hired slowly and thoughtfully and stayed at the 636 office for a decade.
Directionless, in other words. They had no clear idea of what they really wanted to be, and lack the ability to fulfill what they vaguely wanted to be as well.
agreed entirely i was blind to a lot of this for a while until 2019. more so i saw some of the issues in 2017 but they were minor and few and far between i didn't think much of it but by 2019 when they kicked vic, didn't apologize for hiring a wife beater and child abuser after he was arrested for said crimes in early 2020 and then went all social justice and told old fans to fuck off for not liking politics forced in their entertainment in mid 2020 and the micah burton thing, that was when i not only stopped supporting them but also realized they had a lot more issues at play and that was also when they made stupid marketing and PR decisions after another that only hurt them in the long run
I foresaw the death of rooster teeth back in 2015 when they sold themselves to the first company full screen. Everyone thought I was crazy and thought that they can finally do bigger and better projects when in reality it turns into they do more corporate approved projects.
I was cautiously hopeful, but then when Fullscreen got bought by WB, that's when I knew the end was coming. WB has a history of killing great shows and networks like Discovery, and they cancelled the Batgirl movie after the majority of it was done simply for a tax write-off. RT would have been first on the chopping block. RvB is extremely niche, and while RWBY is popular, it doesn't have the mass appeal factor that WB wants.
When you sell yourself to Fullscreen you are inevitably selling yourself to WB. Online media has been experiencing snowball consolidation for decades. Combined with the fact that big players like AT&T, eat RT sized companies daily. If they wanted to last they should’ve stayed independent.
@@materg7505 I don't believe WB owned Fullscreen at the time they bought RoosterTeeth - that acquisition came afterwards. The rest of your point still stands though.
I was confused by the Dogbark move. They should have just kept it under Achievement Hunter. They lost a lot of people who didn't want to subscribe to a new channel so the views were even lower
The desperate attempt to keep changing names and logos without changing anything under the surface really drives home how the leadership had NO IDEA what they were doing.
The entire Dog Bark thing felt like an Adult Swim bit, and not in a good way. Like they were supposed to be making fun of soulless corporate rebranding but instead were 100% serious about it.
Loss of identity was exactly what pushed me away from them. Every time I looked them up, I saw very different content than I expected as an OG Red Vs. Blue fan.
@@darksaiyangoku7303this is not even remotely true. Netflix definitely pioneered the model, you just haven’t read the history, and understandably have an emotional connection to RT.
Honestly rooster teeths closure isn't surprising nor is the desperate moves a lot of crew members have made for relevance as of late. The whole company had basically become a circus of controversies and poor quality and I feel like that's all anyone will remember them for anymore.
I think the silver lining is the core people that the community cared about are still gonna be putting out content. Like Gus and Barb managed to take their more successful projects independent, Gavin's producing content with the likes of Adam Savage, and Geoff's getting some decent support his project with Eric and Gavin. I think not having the corporate strangleholds anymore will do some good for them in terms of being able to work on content they're a bit more invested into and passionate about.
That final video of the founders playing Halo together with all the technical issues that they wouldn't fix was really symbolic of how lazy and low quality their videos became towards the end.
Newer people may remember them that way, but I think most of their original fans will always cherish the early days where things were gloriously imperfect. I'll remember the wonderful first 10 seasons of RvB (And the chorus trilogy and anthology season) as some of the few good memories of my teenage years.
1 thing, Slowmo guys is not roosterteeth and it never was. It was just on their website because it is Gavin free’s channel and it was popular Edit, I changed “it was Gavin” to “it is Gavin” as he still owns the channel and I wanted to avoid confusion. Slowmo Guys is completely unaffected by this
@@panrak123he had legit slow motion experience before rooster teeth, and the company kept using him for slomo so he never lost that experience. Gavin struck me as someone who could afford to act stupid because he always had real, valuable trade experience to fall back on. Same with Michael, dude was an electrician before RT.
Ironically enough, I was too young to get into Rooster Teeth in the glory days (or maybe it just never came across my feed. I had specific tastes). However I *was* an avid watcher of Slowmo Guys. I had no clue it was Gavin’s side project until people started talking about Rooster Teeth as it collapsed.
@@k.-flynn he had legit XP before but now he is litteraly #1 in the entire world when it comes to Slomo vids. if there is a special slomo shot in media. him or Dan is behind it most likley
NGL the *speed* at which they fired him was what turned me off from the company permanently. Guilt irrelevant to them- only following public perception.
True. It was never proved 100% conclusively, but it is very likely that RT had Monty Oum killed to obtain his IPs. There is just so many unnatural coincides (IPs going to the company on his death, having Monty's brother pre-selected as his VA follow up, Monty dying during "simple medical procedure" paid by RT's health insurance...) to consider anything else.
I think a lot of us saw it coming tbh, what with Geoff getting on camera crying about us bullying the poor corporate entity, Gus having long been virtue signaling at people, Joel getting fired for having the wrong political leanings, and Burnie just jettisoning himself from the company entirely. Combine all that with lackluster new shows and them taking the currents ones out to pasture and it was always meant to fail. Then there's then killing the forums, removing the comics, and trying to pretend that the late 2000's-early 2010's era didn't exist, and it makes sense that people would start to leave in droves.
@@Manablade117joel got fired for saying some crazy shit about jews. the other stuff was all fine… it was the jew shit that got him fired. But really if they were able to keep the people that fans liked they could have survived on legacy fans… if they hired people that actually made good videos and were interesting they could have made new fans. If they didn’t let the people who made bad videos become the people who made the hiring decisions they probably could have floated for another couple years
I remember Aaron tweeting about being owed wages or something from Rooster Teeth, and for some reason his ex Barbara responded basically dismissing any possible mistake or wrongdoing on the company's end (looks like around 2/4/2020, but I can't find her tweets so going off memory) and calling him bro or something. Maybe it was an old joke between them, but it seemed heated and unnecessary. Just let Accounting/HR respond to him. Once you took a step back from the content and the parasocial relationships, the company really was very odd most of the time.
It seemed like a dream job where you just got to record yourself having fun with your friends but that’s honestly no way to run a huge company. They grew too big too fast with no game plan and they suffered for it.
@@Gotten1888 Yeah, it was clear a large of part of the mismanagement came down to popular people being put into management positions they weren't qualified for. That said, there were plenty of problems with the qualified people like Gray, Matt, and Burnie
The problem with selling out isn't the money. We know it's not really you anymore. Humans value genuineness, you don't get that from a subsidiary of Warner Brother/Discovery. The board of directors of Warner Brothers will always have more power and if you're part of their empire, you will do as they say even if you hate it. They'll make you do anything and everything they can think of to squeeze every bit of profit out of you and then, when all the fans have finally left, they'll shut you down and write you off on their taxes. It's the way of the entertainment industry.
Go woke, go broke. The Off-topic episode during the pandemic when Mica was saying she was going to kick the racists out of her community or burn down the company was where i had my "this ship is sinking" moment. Like there were "racists in the community" like bro, EVERYONE loved Ray. She just wasn't funny. And she was ribbing into Geoff the entire time while he's having his soy boy rant. I love the guy to death and I felt it when he was taking about his issues with alcoholism and people talking bad about his daughter. But there was no reason for all the white guilt shit. Inviting diversity hires without qualification is like inviting termites into a tree. They're going to take what they can get, ruin it. Then, move onto the next big thing they can leech off of.
Seeing Geoff breakdown crying is like seeing your sweet caring grandpa cry. I feel so bad for him witnessing the company he helped start with his best friends slowly rotting around him. In the end so many people scorned. So many lives upheaved. All happening right in front of his eyes with utterly no control.
Geoff feels like a dog thats missing a leg you bring out to make people feel bad. It feels like hes just supposed to be this tragic figure given how his life is.
@@noblegalifreyan4551 that's exactly what he became for RT the first few times i did truly feel bad and hoped they could change but once I started to see a lot of issues with the company and the shit behind the scenes and nothing was changing and he came out several more times that was when i realized all he had become was a mascot for a pitty party he could have changed most things in the company and made it better. Burnie could have. All the founder and even most of the big faces could have but none of them did. its hard to feel bad for people who can make good change and see the issues at hand and yet sit on their ass and complain about the issues at hand and not do anything to change it
The only part I disagree with was RTX. nothing RT could have done to save that. I go to a lot of cons and the years after Covid were very small. It wasn’t until this year have I noticed that cons have started really filling up again. Still we lost so many medium to small cons because of Covid.
This is so true it hurts. What's extra fucked is that the big cons - Comic Con, Fan Expo, etc - feels the need to save massively on venue costs so everyone is packed like sardines on the 2 or 3 showroom floors they're renting out, compared to effectively having the entire convention center to themselves as it has been a decade prior.
I went to small and large conventions during covid and after covid. The size of the conventions i went to either stayed and grew after covid or grew through covid. RTs handling of covid is why killed rtx Had RT not tried to force masks at rtx in TX when they didnt have a mask mandate, they would have done fine. Instead the ones that were covid isolationists werent gonna go anyways and the ones that were fed up with covid werent gonna go and get masked up when there were other conventions in other places that werent forcing masks. So they shrunk the potential con goers to the minority of people. Thats why I stopped going to RTX. There was no mandate so when they announced the requirement myself and my group wrote it off and went to a different convention instead.
@@STARSRav3n lol. You must be fun at parties. Anyway it’s pretty well known in the con circuit that the Covid times killed hundreds of cons. It’s not just rtx. Go touch some grass
It's funny how nobody seems to recognize the pattern. Low-key, down to earth, relatable ppl make content with heart. It gets big because of that. ..then they sell out 🗿 And everything charming about what they were making is sucked out of it. It dies out. This is a tale probably as old as time, why do people keep making this mistake
@@Slater2113 okay but do you not understand that because of that thinking, that's no longer a possibility? You'd think staying in business would be the first step in achieving that goal
@@Slater2113They seemed to be making money just fine before Fullscreen bought them. They didn't need to turn into a soulless production company to make enough to retire.
@@KuzuTomoki by the time the company is no longer sustainable, the founder has already skipped town with his bag and two fingers up. It's the whole Boomer mentality.
I think the biggest issues were hiring too many people too quickly and not addressing criticism in a meaningful way. It was all corporate blanket statements, direct denial of problems, or blaming the audience for having a problem with anything.
I want to shout out the members of the let’s play family that died over the years too, who had amazing content but just couldn’t keep up with the pressures of the algorithm. Cow chop. Sugar Pine 7. Screw attack. Becoming an MCN was definitely part of rooster teeth’s issue.
Surprised that you didn’t bring up The Creatures since they were part of that initial “group” of outsider channels connected to RT. But given how they ultimately fell apart due to their own mismanaged mistakes (mainly Kootra’s) not too surprising tbh.
What they did to SP7 was why I was done with these people. Their constant pressure pretty much split up a group of friends who wanted to make something fun together. Then finding out about the controversies within RT, was just too much
Forgot cow chop was rt. But yeah I remember specifically choosing to watch cow chops content over ah and rt at the time because the dynamic between the crew was what made the channel. The lifeless additions to already popular content with figureheads drove those shows below a palatable flavor. Alex, Uber and Trevor just being klut's and doing stupid shit was peak
@@oklin2376 they talked about it on one of the podcastsi think it was. RT basically forced them to change the shows style to a drama with plot instead of being goofy guys doing goofy things. And to rush out episodes which is what caused the burnout in the last "season" of videos
The decision to saturate their channels with mediocre sludge was not wise and turned a lot of people away. I swear they had like 20 different podcast-type shows and they were all terrible.
Or you know "Hey guys welcome to episode number *way to fucking many* of minecraft because this used to make us money and its essy to do so we are gonna milk it to the ground" content
@@noctotainlowry9246 They should've helped Ray out a bit and diversified their content. Whoever was in the big chair at the time saw the numbers that the Minecraft and GTA V Let's Plays were pulling and just forced them to make nothing but THOSE types of videos. Can you believe they made fun of Ray for a time for making a risky life decision? If only they could see how it all panned out.
Wait, what? There was more than one season of Gen Lock? I thought it floundered and died after the first episodes aired, I heard of absolutely no one watching it or even caring about it.
There was indeed a 2nd season, but most of the production team from the 1st were replaced due to all the company culture and crunch issues. No one watched it and the writing took a massive nosedive so the few people who did watch it also hated it.
@@donutbevil9669 although the character in Gen:Lock then came back a few episodes later, totally undermining the (badly done) drama they’d set up! Shit was laughable.
Rooster Teeth became like that dog that you say goodbye to everytime you go home because you think it might die before the next time you get to see it.
One thing that always made me frown was that when the Ryan thing happened, they talked about removing him where they could, but they'd already purged every trace of the RTAA that coincided with one of his victims' testimonies. They deliberately purged his lie before they even had Jack talk about removing his traces from the brand, and acted like it didn't happen ever
@@neurohack9038people are too hard on Adam Kovic dude got doomed by being in a way smaller scandal around the same time. Everybody says they're names together which is awful for him, Ryan may have committed many felonies with many different women.
Man 2011 - 2013 were such nice years Jontron and Egoraptor's Game Grumps Super Best friends OG AH and Rooster Teeth A more wild west and free internet thats less corporatized the early 2010s were filled with such optimism then the late 2010s and 2020 came by to ruin that fun
I'm still depressed how bad they spiraled out of control and existence. I've been a fan since the beginning and to see me drift away from them while they drift out of reality is crazy. R.I.P Rooster Teeth
As someone already pointed out, the final video getting that much viewership is kind of poetic and probably the sign of how dense they were in their decissions. I don't think going corporate was the problem, but how lacking their personality became. It was all about the content and numbers, whoever the talent was, it didn't matter, both to them and the audience. When people leave, even if the content stays active, there's a portion of quality that also gets lost because the personality is gone, and you either bring something new, or die hoping that something else fills the void. On top of just Warner Bros. being worse than Microsoft in terms of killing off studios and projects left and right, this was bound to happen no matter what.
Why is it that every youtube channel that gets over a certain amount of million subs immediately screeches into doing "variety content" which literally nobody cares about? If I sub to a channel for gaming I don't want to see you make videos about blind taste testing jellybeans or buying vintage Nintendo toys from Japanese ebay.
For AH/LP, the charm was the ensemble cast doing things they enjoyed. e.g. when they sucked at games, they'd say "you don't watch us to watch us play well". So, I can see how they might see "do variety show" ought to be fun to watch. But, yeah, I wanna see them ... try to play Halo LASO or do the GTA heists, or whatever.
Because everyone, including both the audience and the content creator, have their own tastes, opinions, and preferences. You may not care about a certain type of content but just because you don't, doesn't mean no one else does.
"hey there guys. i noticed you loved our spaghetti. now get ready for our new dish! its a chinese dish called virgin boy eggs. i think youll love it!" thats what they all do. and surprisingly it ends bad. (also thats a real dish look it up)
Nothing were as great as the days with Bruce, Lawrence, Adam & James just laughing themself half into a coma. I miss those moments. FH never was the same after the departures. Anyone got anymore scrobbles left?
Bruce and Lawrence have a channel right now with Kassem G called "BroughtYouThisThing" that's on par for the best classic FH content. I'm kinda hoping that they can bring James in on some of his new free time
@@Illier1 grow up move on. Adam did.... He said sorry, got help, did his penance. Learn how to function in a society. Or is a criminal a criminal forever......
For those curious To find a video on their channel that beats the 4 dudes on a sofa playing halo for views, You have to go back to 2020 And it opens with a sponsorship...
I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with sponsorships but in RT's case they should have seen the writing on the wall and changed accordingly. Either by downsizing or significantly changing the direction of their videos.
The N word on the whiteboard incident was Jeremy and he has totally apologiesed for it as it genuinely was a misunderstanding, he was trying explain the South Park "People who annoy me" Wheel of Fortune joke where Randy drops the N bomb to Gavin and Mica unfortunately saw it with 0 context which jeremy very openly apologised for on stream
She is the daughter of Lavar Burton who is an extreme leftist, BLM white hater. I hate that is the truth because I liked Reading Rainbow as a kid and I loved Star Trek TNG but it's the truth. No way you could ever explain the hilarious South Park joke to her. I'm not going to lie and say I have a ton of black friends but the few black guys I do know LOVED that episode. She will ALWAYS be looking for a reason to be offended, so she will find it every time.
i said it to myself when they posted their goodbye stream that its incredibly funny and ironic that their goodbye stream is one of their most viewed videos in the last few months if not years.
I remember discovering Rooster Teeth when I was in high school back in 2011, I started by watching Red vs Blue, then that lead me to Achievement Hunter, Animated Adventures, RT Shorts and eventually I started watching all of their content, and you could see the passion and humor behind it, it all felt so genuine, and I think that's what drew us to them in the first place, just how real and down to earth they were is what made them so captivating. God, I remember thinking working for Rooster Teeth would be a dream come true because they seem to genuinely enjoy what they did and you could feel the love they put into their content, even if it wasn't the best in terms of production quality. I think it was around the time of the whole Vic Mignogna situation that I started to slowly drift away from RT, their content was on the decline, the old crew were leaving in droves, and, quite frankly, there were more entertaining things to occupy my time with. It wasn't until the workplace mistreatment scandals came out that I finally unsubscribed, for me, that's when Rooster Teeth truly died, everything after was just the death march of the soulless, empty husk of a once great company, shuffling its way toward its inevitable end. I'm sorry for the long rant, it's just that I, like all of you, have so many fond memories of Rooster Teeth and it breaks my heart to see it end like this. I resent the decisions they made that brought them to this point. I despise the soulless entities that swooped in and tore this once great company appart. I mourn what came before and the blissful days gone by. R.I.P Rooster Teeth, we thank you for years of entertainment, and hope for the best for those who must now pick up the pieces of their shattered dream.
It's always fascinating -- and rather heartbreaking -- how so many of these rise-and-fall stories spring from the same source: The moment you sell out, go corporate or just stop doing it for fun, it's over. It's like these people just forget where they came from and that it was their genuine passion for what they did that drew in their fanbase, not the scope of their projects or their production values. The moment they stopped having fun, so did their fanbase.
I keep thinking of the movie The Menu. Spoilers if you care: The main villain of the film wants to kill an audience of high and mighty yuppies and himself because he no longer enjoys cooking. This guy was a major michelin star chef who had it all, but he didn't enjoy it one bit. The heroine of the film then finds out that he used to be a simple fry cook. At the end of the movie, she survives because she asks him to make a simple cheeseburger, not anything fancy, just a cheeseburger. That moment was a rare time where he enjoyed cooking. After that, he let her go. I keep thinking about these people losing their passion because they went corporate, or made it into a job, and I go back to this movie.
Yes, precisely. It's the simple things in life that make all the difference, and one should never sacrifice their happiness for profit. Just look at the final segment of this video: the 4 founders just sitting down and having fun together. That's ALL their fanbase ever wanted to see of them, and the video's inordinately high view count proves it. It's a shame they couldn't have realized this any sooner.
This was a very apt and surgical summary of what we as a fan base had to witness. Thank you for doing this without adding more salt to the wound. Thank you
I was a huge fan of Rooster Teeth growing up. I got introduced to RvB and then eventually Achievement Hunter. I remember watching the boys do Lets Play, getting me to always religiously make the Tower of Pimps in every minecraft world I was in. They were even my first introduction to Podcast as I never knew what that was, listening to hours of endless jokes and conversations........ i wanna say around 2015 to 2016 is when I stopped, with the last video i remember being when they played D&D and got me into the game(which inevitably introduced me to Critical Role). I'll always remember the good times, and its sad to see it end in this way. PS Can't see Achievement Hunters the same way due to Ryan
I haven’t watched Funhaus in a few years but seeing Elyse’s posts on instagram about closing down shop hit me a little harder than I would like to admit. The glory days of Funhaus were some sort of idiotic magic that had me doubled over in laughter,
@@floatinghamstick i think Adam's thing came at the worst time possible while the whole company was dealing with the Ryan controversy and i guess another scandal was just more than they could handle so he had to get dragged down it's still a horrible thing to do even if its nowhere near as horrible as what Ryan allegedly did
@@germen343 well god bless you man, I hope you never start a project and watch it get swallowed up by corporate malfeasance and have to feel the same way
Rooster teeth (specifically the achievement hunter and let's play channels) were such a big part of my life in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I would always be so excited to watch their latest upload. Their content helped me get through a lot back in those days. The banter and chemistry between the original crew and even some of the first newer members like Jeremy was just perfect. I'll always look back at those videos with great memories. Between the Minecraft, GTA, and so many other videos of that time. Those really were the golden years.
one of the writers of season 2 is writing a new Gundam series coming out on Netflix, and as expected it looks terrible and screams Zeon apologist wankfest
Watched season 1 of gen:LOCK and LOVED it, had a couple pacing issues but overall a nice story of a team coming together. and ofc badass action both on the ground and in mechs. I have no interest in ever fully watching season 2.
I didn't even know GenLock existed after it was first advertised. I thought it just died in a hole somewhere after the first few episodes. I never saw anyone talking about it and Joon's video is the first time I've ever heard it had a second season.
I spent most of my College days 2011-2015 OBSESSED with RT. They helped me get into video, I started making community videos and even got my own show on their community channel before Nintendo started all those takedowns. Then my humor evolved, I stopped laughing at all the crude jokes, they got old. People left, new people came in, it was NOT the company I became a fan of. I definitely think they have been on borrowed time for years, it's a shame.
This was exactly when I was really into them too, then I found funhaus and sort of transitioned to them over time but once the core crew left I fell off of them too. So thankful for the memories
to this day I think my favorite series of content outside of RvB was the Lets Play Halo LASO (with the main cast of Ryan, Gavin, and any of the Geoff, Jack, Micheal, or Alfreado.) The phrases and terms that came out of their games and struggles. "front-back" being the one I still use sometimes. I have never returned to since everything went down with Ryan. and I think that was the last piece of "new" content I ever watched from them after that.
It's sad to see Geoff give everything he could to hold the company he loved together. If he ever starts a personal channel/company, I'd love to support it just do he doesn't feel like he failed.
This was a long time coming. Rooster teeth was a big part of my childhood from Red VS ble to their silly game videos, achievement hunter series, let's plays, Micheal doing his rage videos. But I knew they were slated to die as soon as they started becoming super PC and focusing on podcasts rather than what their channel used to be. As soon as they made that shift I knew they were over. I'm honestly surprised they lasted this long. RIP roosterteeth. But yall did this to yourself.
Jesus, seeing Kerry in that last segment makes me realize just how old I am. I remember when I was in high school and he was a fresh face at the company. Now he looks so old.
For real, the dude looked like a newborn baby when he first joined. Michael looks way older and almost unrecognizable as well. Meanwhile Trevor and Alfredo look like they haven't aged a day haha
Mega64 never lost their identity and they own 100% of their company and even found ways to continue their momentum through covid. If you want to survive in this industry, be like them
Rooster Teeth should've never tried to be this big production company. I don't know how many people work for Mega64 (never really watched much of their stuff) but it's probably not the hundreds that worked for RT.
Not sure who Mega64 are, but The Yogscast was similar to early days Rooster Teeth too. The Yogscast is still around and still successful. So they are something to look up to as well
I do love that the people who deserve to continue are continuing. Gavin, Geoff, Michael, everyone who made it what it was and not those who felt entitled to it.
Full Screen acquisition was the beginning of the end. I was a "first member" for almost 15 years i think. SO I suppose you could say i "had my finger on the pulse of this thing" I could see things changing subtly.
There are several lessons any aspiring media owner should take from Roosterteeth, closing down like this. The largest one, in my strong opinion; Never EVER involve yourself with expanding your business through investors. They WILL gut your company in the long-term. You will never keep profits and growth going long enough. That ship for businesses, has sailed. The other important lessons; do not outpace your natural company growth. Very important to know that growing a company slower, will help during tough times. Other important social business/customer relations lessons; AVOID being overtly political one way or another. Best to stay middle road. The majority of time when activists demand you take a stance on some thing, they aren't even your target audience. They just want your word on something, and they move onto the next target. You have more risk alienating your actual customer/audience core. Stick to "We are here to provide this or that, not give lectures", it will do better long-term. Finally; when it comes to entertainment. While it is good to stand up for yourself, while also letting major criticisms in one ear and out the other. Pick and choose your battles. DO NOT ALIENATE OR INSULT YOUR AUDIENCE. Your audience is the one holding all the cards in their favor, and are far less willing to put up with being insulted all the time. It is time for media businesses to actually take care for their core audience, rather than actively/publicly insulting them. Roosterteeth in the end, learned all of these lessons the hard way. They no longer exist as a company, they took investors to grow, the investors demand high returns. Got bought out, and the buyouts gutted their core stories, while hating their core audience, and caving to non-audience activists. All that came from it was a sinking ship that no one cared to save.
It's disheartening how often we see things like this. People liked them because they were real, they weren't corporate despite their size, but the company that bought them didn't want what they were and so they died as a result.
@SearedBooks I do get it. I see passion in film all the time. It does not always mean quality, very obvious. Take my favorite indie film for instance; Who Killed Captain Alex (I literally buy their merch). Absolute passion projects. On an enormously small budget (which sounds like one hoot of an oximoron). It takes a long time to produce, there is VERY little money that goes into it. So it's a very niche entertainment product as a result. But the best part is he's in charge of his vision, some can crash and burn, but he's in charge of it. Major industry investment would demolish his image of film. While getting investments are a hugee boon to a budget and can help move a project along easier, it abruptly opens the project up to editorial decisions. Which so rapidly become demands, and then amalgamated processes. It becomes harder and harder to produce entertainment due to budgets and what people do want for entertainment. But getting outside money to appease an audience means outside voices get a say, no one is pleased. Vultures I tell you. You need the money, but where that money flows from is a bad place. Stick small, avoid investors. Grassroots media may be seriously low budget, but more often it has more passion.
Wendy's only get away with snide tweets because they had basically no online presence before that, so it's not like there were existing 'fans' who would be annoyed by the change. RoosterTeeth already had a very specific kind of fan, and had for a very very long time. So suddenly shifting it into Reddit-tier mean tweets is silly beyond any explanation. Clearly this is just yet another case of something made with passion that the creators eventually were done with, but the husk was sold to passionless corporate suits who wanted to parade it as long as they felt there was enough goodwill to convert into money. See: Bethesda post-Oblivion, Bungie/343 after Reach, Call of Duty sometime before Ghosts, Blizzard around the time of the activision merge, etc, etc.
Can't Remember the Podcast i heard this from or what the exact context of it was, but it really hit me as to why a lot of entertainment studios lose touch with their audience.
As much as people are too sensitive now a days he should’ve never threatened to take a weapon to the workplace and think it was an okay thing to do. A few years earlier when they fired Kathleen (Tex) who may not have been a founding member but was there since the beginning and was an important part of all of RT’s early things especially with the fans from interactions to RTX and everything. When they terminated her I knew RT was falling apart then the Joel stuff happened then Burnie left, apart from voicing Tucker, Jason had little to no involvement with RT despite being a founding member himself and being active in the early years. The writing was on the wall. I personally only kept up to see what they were doing with Red vs Blue
@@josecano9210he claimed to have never owned a gun let alone having taking one to work. The gun to work thing was just a rumor that spiraled from my understanding. There was no evidence that anybody ever to back the claims either. Pretty much what it has been actually chalked up to is the fact that he isnt of the same political ideology as the rest of RT and he popped off on twitter during covid. He didnt support lockdowns, hated the riots, talked shit about antifa, didnt get along with Jack, etc
@@darksaiyangoku7303technically you aren’t wrong. But they weren’t plaguing this community as much until i wanna say after like 2020 maybe even earlier
Between the controversies, the mismatched who’s who of people that no one really cares about, the deaths, the firings, those who left when they did. It is amazing how they lasted so long.
Geoff laughing at the very end is heartbreaking. I stopped watching RT back when Monty died, and I missed all of the bad stuff. It was really rough to see how things turned out. I remember the excitement they had every time they needed to move somewhere bigger, and the beginning of each new project.
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Correction #1: Rooster Teeth was acquired by Fullscreen in 2014, I misread the line and said 2024.
Correciton #2: Though it may have been partnered with Rooster Teeth for a period,The Slo Mo Guys are independent of Rooster Teeth.
Scam
This is a very bizarre sponsorship. Giving legal advice to randos on the internet is almost along the same lines as a betterhelp ad 😬
You should have notified the viewers before you went into the ad read. I didn't realize it was an ad until the end.
To each his own, I suppose
make your money, king. I'm not going to use the service but I'm happy you can make sponsor money!
Slow Mo Guys did not belong to Rooster Teeth. Gavin was smart enough to maintain ownership of his property.
He made the right decision. At least his IP is still his and flourishing
Slo mo guys is the only one i still watch and thats the same with most people
What i loved about slo mo guys was gavin was actually smart, he would go from idiot at RT to scientist at slo mo guys
@@mikedonlon1594he's been called a scientist by several different publications so that makes it official, lolol
pretty bad research on joons part. like who doesnt know that lol
Rooster Teeth dying wasn't surprising, but it still hurts to think about how something I used to love rotted away so awfully.
Watching something you loved or still love die a slow and painful death while it's scrambling to do everything to prevent that is just... so sad. I was never a huge Rooster Teeth fan back in the day but I would watch their stuff when it popped up on my RUclips recommended every so often. They felt like they were going to be here forever, you know?
@@aliencafe I definitely get what you mean
Love them? Didn't they just make cringey halo machinima?
@@shioq. exactly what I'm thinking, always found rooster teeth annoying ever since I was a kid back in 2014, nothing at all was lost with the downfall of their channel
Red Vs Blue was funny. Then they made a serious story and it was... Not great.@@shioq.
Having the video of them playing halo one last time be their most viewed content in years really shows how distant from their core audience they became. What a slap in the face.
Yep, exactly. I honestly slowly stopped watching them once Ray left. After he left in that minecraft let’s play video, I had a feeling things were gonna change drastically. He felt like the glue holding them together and after he left the interactions just weren’t as funny and seemed more forced. I felt the Minecraft lets play was their golden era. They had RvB, Minecraft lets play, worms, and some other things and then they just stopped or quality got worse and then they started bringing on other people who just weren’t funny, had no personality or were actually just d bags off screen and it really showed that they had forgotten the people who actually allowed their channel to flourish
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XT I agree it's sad to see as it turned into something that was a bunch of friends playing video games and making fun animations into just down right awful content with random people that no one found slight interest in.
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XT Ray was my favorite one there 🥲
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XTAchievement Hunter was still in its peak after he left. Especially with so many memorable moments with Jeremy and Alfredo in the mix. It started going downhill around 2019, then completely dwindled once Covid hit.
They should have had a video of a bunch of random non white people who no one knows or cares about playing Halo for one last time, cause that's what it turned into.
I always count Ray leaving as the first sign of trouble, even if most of it was his own desire for freedom, his note of things become more corporate was telling.
He got off the Titanic to get on a kayak and paddle to England.
And there were people telling him he wasn't going to make it. I wonder what they'd think now.
@@Hyrule409 Yeah, I vaguely remember people saying his first stream would be his high point (especially with Noch's huge donation) followed by a steady decline. But he's still doing what he loves with no end in sight.
Seeing him play Minecraft again with Nags and Chibidoki without saying he is about to fall asleep was nostalgic (especially with Chibi making old AH jokes)
Dude is living his best life and it shows. He's streaming when he wants to he's got a beautiful family (wife and dogs) his own successful merch line. So happy for the creator of Mr diddles. @@seki108
Ray knew RT was slowly becoming less about Friends and new Friends having a great time, and more a modern day sjw woke dei liberal marxist fest of employees who joined RT with the intent of being thin skinned and causing trouble to "get money". Liberalism killed RT
I remember thinking at the time that it was so stupid for Ray to leave. I mean, Rooster Teeth was a reliable source of income and going to streaming seemed like rolling the dice. He'd definitely have a strong start, but would he be able to hold onto that audience? It seemed like an unnecessary risk. Plus, who wouldn't want to work in an environment as *amazing as Rooster Teeth?
*Citation needed
And time proved me wrong. Ray is still a very successful streamer, and Rooster Teeth went the way of the dinosaur, with its reputation in tatters. Maybe holding together barely, but still badly damaged all the same.
Rooster teeth died because they became something completely different than what they were.
Bernies dumb ass hated Trump becoming president so much he forced the whole company to go woke, no look, they're all unemployed, it's a great day.
Just a group of friends recording themselves having a fun time became a corporate entity too big to succeed
@@DeltaDanner Yeah and funny enough people like a group of friends just hanging out.
Yea they died because they went woke. It was really simple. The moment they kowtowed to the woke mob, they lost me.
To split the hair: It wasn't just that they became different, it's that they became worse. At least in practice, there was no tradeoff when Rooster Teeth went from indie to corporate, just things lost. Many good things lost.
Rooster Teeth as a company has been dead for years, and I'm not sad to see it finally rest. It's like seeing a zombified family member be put down, there's sadness for missing what it once was, but relief in knowing nothing is puppeting its body anymore.
That said, I'm terribly sorry for the amount of people who have lost their jobs, and I hope everyone manages to land on their feet.
Rest in peace Rooster Teeth.
Like you said, I feel bad for those who lost their jobs. But the company itself, I don’t feel bad for.
I guess you can call what the non animators were doing jobs.
This is honestly the best way to describe it. I still look back on RTAA stuff. And I mourn for all the great Monty Oum projects we never got to see. But after awhile, you just had to acknowledge that it was there. Not really living. Just there. Now that it's gone we can properly appreciate it for what it was and appreciate its legacy. A bittersweet end. Sad. But at least now we have closure.
Agreed, the staff (especially the animation staff) working under the onscreen names are the ones we should be feeling sorry for.
Great way to put it. It forecasted ago, now it can finally rest
Roster Teeth was started by some guys just dicking around, and then it just lost that identity. But also fuck them for killing Screwattack
Isn’t Screwattack still kicking?
(Edit: NvM I conflated it with Death Battle.)
@@alexdurain3753Craig Skistimas started Side Scrollers. After all this he stated he wanted to buy back Screwattack
This
Also screw them for destroying Monty's vision by firing his wife and a few of the writers
Rwby may have not always been a quality series but the first 3 volumes you can feel the passion and that I respect
never forget RT rigged multiple Death battles to let their characters Win
That's the problem. All these nerds don't know how to make money. All they know how to do is prank, act like children & write a joke. You can't keep that up for life. You need a real business strategy.
"Hey, you ever wonder why we're here?" - Opening line of the first RvB.
"Why we were here" - the title of their very last podcast where everyone got a chance to say goodbye.
Dang. Well that’s cleverly done
Ain't that a bitch...
Not sure if planned, but kinda sweet
@@PartnershipsForYou it was
So, they DO KNOW how to pull off clever follow-through and callbacks.
They just chose not to do that for the last...all of RWBY.
Hearing Geoff's laugh again towards the end of the video brought me back to the days when I first found Roosterteeth, it still brings me back to those better times.
Regulation podcast/gameplay is where he is now and it's great
Geoff can take half the blame himself on god. Bro had TDS even way back.
He finally, after all these years, got what he wanted. His speech at RTX one year about just wanting to hang out with his friends again was heartbreaking. I'm so glad for him that this happened
Halo Fails of the Weak for me after Halo Reach came out.
Monty Oum's passing, may he rest in peace, was the first crack that gave us an inside look at what was to be the beginning of the end.
Man I just hope Geoff does ok. His life has been wrought with strife since starting the company and he didn’t deserve any of it.
Watching him breakdown was hard. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to see something you helped build with friends reach the peak and then end in such a lackluster fashion.
Man was the punching bag of the company for the last couple of years. That podcast where he's alone talking about the layoffs that had just happened and just breaks down, nobody deserves to go through it. Plus with all the shit that happened in his personal life makes me really hope he manages to hit the ground running.
I haven’t really kept up with rt for many many years, but even back when he like just started going through his divorce I’ve always just wanted Geoff to do well. He’s such a genuinely good person
@@justinjunker1399 Its hard seeing him be so depressing and miserable
Rewatching early 2010s RT videos and lets plays he always had the most iconic laugh out of the OG 6
Its really sad to see a group of friends just drift apart and a once passion project become a soulless company with no charm or well soul
(But man is it hard to rewatch some old stuff with Ryan in it)
@@ImmaLittlePip I’m sure some of the Ryan stuff is. Unsettling, to say the least given his humor in videos and the eventual accusations.
Rooster Teeth got Machinima'd.
By the same damn company too
Almost. Machinima ended up deleting their entire social media presences, while Rooster Teeth still have their RUclips/Twitter/Whatever social media still up. Still, I can't imagine these staying up for any longer.
@@hairymac11 Why is Warner Bros. doing this to their acquisitions?
@@Nightwing690 For Rooster Teeth and Machinima? Most likely a financial decision, since neither of them were making WBD any money.
@@Nightwing690 "why is Warner Bros. doing literally anything they do?" is the better question. from letting Velma see the light of day but scraping a movie with new Hex Girls music to letting the Flash movie with Miller exist but locking Batgirl in the vault. oh, can't forget Coyote vs. Acme getting shelved even though test screenings went super well. everyone is asking what the heck Warner Bros. is doing, including Warner Bros. themselves
Well the thing about the Wendy's tweets is them bashing other companies. Rooster Teeth bashing the audience is just going to piss them off.
I was gonna say, corporations don't have feelings, fans do.
The key to good comedy. Never punch down.
Wendy's tweets?
@@broden4838 Wendys fast food, apostrophe was accident.
@@Quizzicall huh?
Its legitimately impressive how long they managed to survive with how much they kept selling out.
This was never about selling out. It was that the company went woke and lost everyone they originally were made for. They used to be irreverent, funny and unconcerned with others opinions and then they became a bunch of pu$$*&$.
@@jakel9030that’s exactly what selling out is
They would've failed even if they never went corporate. What killed the company was vanity, at its core, and I saw that root take hold near the start of the video podcasts with Burnie insulting swaths of people and telling anyone that complained to leave. Calling Kdin slurs and substituting slurs for in videos happened while they were still a small company too. Nothing could have ever saved RT from failing; its founders and core employers were arrogant from the second they got an actual studio
@@jakel9030 thats........selling out? throwing away your core idealoigies for money. like you literally just described selling out
Sure I felt bad for Geoff crying, but RT itself was a piece of shit for quite a while... I remember reading about how poorly they treated their animators (and how many animator communities knew to stay far away from them) and just how they really didn't care about the "little people" when things had been going well for the company overall. You reap what you sow.
At some point I stopped feeling bad for him. I saw a lot of tears and speeches from him but no changes followed.
How much was he really involved in the animation department as it became bigger?
as soon as you go from a personality driven channel, with a singular/bunch of people doing stuff they love into a giant team of producers, editors, writers, it's over as far as I'm concerned
The problem is that they didn't look after a lot of their good personalities, which lead to them leaving and getting replaced with average personalities.
Meh, plenty of channels have transitioned into what you've described and found success. Linus Media Group for example
Who could've guessed? Corporate morons ruin art? No wayyyyy. Unbelievable. I cannot believe that a board room full of producers was not able to create genuine and entertaining content. What a shock. I am in shock.
@@mordant221I hope you're joking
Oh cool it's indei
It's fascinating how the segment at the very end captured the essence of Rooster Teeth in its glory days. Just a bunch of friends sitting around a couch, laughing and having fun. That's how it all started. That was the heart of Rooster Teeth. It's sad that it's over but that was the one sweet moment in this bitter spiral.
Quite prescient. The further removed they came from their original core appeal, the more directionless and unidentifiable they became.
In other words, there’s evolving your content and then there’s losing your touch.
I stopped watching RT when it became annoyingly corporate. I think it's a fine line to walk but I'm surprised that no one in management picked up that it had lost its identity.
@@floatinghamstick It's really easy to miss stuff like that when its done gradually over 20 years. That's how people go from skinny to really fat too. Its a new normal, and another new normal, again and again, until you've strayed so far off the path you thought you were on and now you're lost.
Its almost poetic. Only in its death did they finally rediscover what made RT so special.
The Lets Play minecraft episodes 1-100 will always be a great memory
Gavin's secret trophy room is one of my all time favorite moments 😂
Not knowing what was inside that Altar nearly killed me as a 14 year old
@@hoosierdeddy92 I love Ray's "Loser you're a loser" reference
Also when that message "Brownman has left the game" I think that was the end of RT at least AH
I do like Jeremy but the OG 6 man nothing can beat their chemistry
“I’M NOT DYING!” Is still the hardest I’ve ever laughed at RT. I’m glad Ray went on to do well streaming.
What happened after episode 100
They told me to go away, so I did.
bro when they announced dogbark i knew they were dead
I got the idea to separate from the name achievement hunter because they wanted to do something they enjoyed but then to just lapse back into playing games on dogbark felt so pointless
The fact that Camp Camp returned after a long hiatus only to die after 4 rushed episodes and have it's studio shut down still hurts. Nothing but tears here 😔
The change in voice talent to voices that didn't sound similar was a big red flag.
@@jdng86 this but Qrow
Quinton Flynn would have made the most sense but nah they didn't even try to get a similar VA
@@APunishedManNamed2 Jason Liebrecht was very close to Vic's voice IMO. It really only became noticeable when he yelled/screamed, which is understandable, holding a voice that isn't your natural for yelling/screaming is exceptionally difficult.
They should've hired Vic Mignogna@@themacattack540
Jason Liebrecht’s voice was very different from Vic’s Qrow voice I’m not trying to hate Jason I’m just saying it was noticeable for me.
Rooster Teeth's shining gems were FunHaus and Acchievement Hunter. They didn't seem to think so, but we did.
Fanhaus died because after about 1 year the host started leaving and by the end only james was left and he was the worst one
@@RusticRonnie Funhaus died when Adam Kovic was removed and Bruce Greene left to do his own thing. James was never bad (honestly his banter with his wife Elyse was some of the funnier parts of the series) but those three were the foundation that Funhaus stood on and grew from. Early Demo Disks with the three of them were always the peak of what Funhaus ever was.
@@RusticRonnie James has always been the funniest, are you high
James is funniest but only when he was riffing off Bruce imo. Lawdawg was a close second
It was really Adam. When Adam did his shit he drove a lot of people away. Bruce and Lawrence admitted they left because they reported Adam in the past and it was ignored.
I have no idea why James and Elyse stayed, they could do so much more.
I met Bernie once, several years ago at the only E3 I was able to attend. I was a big hopeful about my youtube channel (Darkovika Gaming, this one was a second project, I've retired from both projects), and I found out RoosterTeeth was doing shoutouts for youtube channels on their livestream, so I wandered over, and Bernie saw me hovering and like popped up and was liek "Hey! You a youtuber?" And was just the nicest, friendliest, kindest dude I'd ever mt. I ended up being moved to the sideline with some Funhaus guys, and Blaine- working lights- explicitly told us, "I WILL FLAG YOU when you are about to go on. PAY ATTENTION" and I remember seeing him out of the corner of my eye waving frantically at us just as the lights hit us and we entirely missed our cue hahaha. Bernie was cracking up on the side, Blaine was smashing his face with a clipboard, and we looked goofy as heck. I popped off camera a few minutes later, and Bernie was all smiles and laughter and told me I did great. I'll never forget that experience. I wish it could have always been that vibe, always, with the company as a whole
Burnie was one of my favorite people at RT. He was hard headed and dang ignorant a lot, but he had such a way he went about things that made him enjoyable just to listen to. Him leaving was the nail in the coffin for RT. He prolly saw where things were going and ran. Can't blame him.
@@DorrajBurnie was never ignorant
@@PodreyJenkin138 As someone who has literally listened/watched every single episode of the RT Podcast up until Burnie left, twice.... Yes he was. He would sit there and sit on his words until proven otherwise, pretending to know what he was talking about. It's not a bashing of him, as often he would eat his words gracefully if proven wrong, and majority of the time he wouldn't take it that seriously regardless, but he absolutely had many ignorant moments lol
Working at Rooster Teeth was my dream job at 14
Studied Mass Communication in college with the idea I might be able to move to Austin and try my luck with them. Had a group of friends who felt the same.
My life moved on from that and in a lot of ways I wish I had tried, but I’m so glad to be older, wiser, and with a steady job.
Trying to become an animation studio was a mistake.
No, the mistake was trying to become an animation studio and then after three seasons shitting on Monty Oum's legacy by going woke and pandering to the weirdest and most unhinged parts of the show's fandom.
@@GriggsDeMagus going woke??? the fuck
@@TheDancingHyena He's talking about how they shit all over Adam's character and the plot for the sake of lesbian shippers. Bumblebee was undeniably shoved into the show to appease a small demographic which destroyed the power scaling, Blake's romance plotline with Sun, Adam's motivations by becoming a stupid edgy yandere (and subsequently the White Fang), and Yang's trauma arc. Not to mention they inserted lesbian lizard girl who IMMEDIATELY replaced Adam in his new forced role as a scorned lover.
It was a serious indication of the writing's incoming car crash. It's like the writer's wondered what it would be like to drive the series off a cliff.
@@TheDancingHyena if you pay attention to alot of beloved things dying in more recent years its most likely because they went woke, or atleast thats the easy to use buzzword for it. Progressives that hold virtue signaling and pushing politics above all else, and these types also tend to have no imagination or creative bones in their body, and often create enviroments that stifle genuine creativity in entertainment.
@@TheDancingHyena Have you seen the fandom? Good Looooooooooord they are crazy!!!
The day Roosterteeth closed, their most recent video was an Elders React, which so perfectly summarized why Roosterteeth died.
Elders react? Was it Geoff and Gus?
😂😂😂
Ah yes, the well known pipeline of quality content: react videos
It's also very telling how their last few months of videos are stuff like "You can't make horror movies in the hood" really playing up the blackness with only the black cast on thumbnails for weeks straight. You can literally smell the pandering desperation like, "Look how much we care about black people! We're woke!" It's even more obvious when it's followed by a thumbnail with 95% white employees. Woke people never seem to be able to grasp that forced lame representation makes minorities like us look lame. Too busy trying to be saviors to see that.
Everything else aside how the fuck does one get sponsered by Morgan & Morgan 😭
I can only assume they thought "this guy's audience seems like the type who incurs grievous injury, let's check it out" 😂
Companies will sponsor anyone as long as they pull in views.
It's easy they are a scorched earth firm they'll drain you of money and not win you anything then take most of the money. They've ruined their reputation and can only advertise thru stupid youtubers
Rooster teeth was a place I dreamed to work at. They directly got me into wanting to be an animator which led to me wanting to be a filmmaker.
I would not be on my current track of life without them.
It’s heartbreaking that they are gone but I will always treasure the memories Achievement hunter, RWBY, Res Vs Blue, funhaus etc.
Likewise. I worked on a few projects with them in their games division and was almost hired on there in 2018, but the project (a RWBY based CCG) fell through in the middle stages when they went a different direction with it.
The fact that so many people were inspired by and wanted to work at the company was amazing, but it was also a big part of the company's downfall, especially during the animation scandal. People who had grown up watching RT were willing to work there in conditions and for pay that were well below industry standard simply *because* it was RT, and the company definitely abused that reputation.
You can always start your own business though.
@@gloverfox9135 I went to RTX a few times and during the QnA panels with the founders, Burnie would always preemptively answer the question of "How do I get a job at RoosterTeeth?"
His answer to this question was always "Make your own RoosterTeeth. Start a podcast, make some animations or skits with your friends, or anything else to get your love of creativity out into the world."
Same here, I work in writing comedies and do improv theatre as a hobby and most of my style of humour originated from the old RvB seasons.
Look into how they treated their staff and animators and thank God you never stepped foot in that cesspool to work on that trash show
Man, watching Rooster Teeth die was like watching your old dog get old and just die of age.
The first death bell for RT was when Monty died.
The second death bell was when the controversies with the main staff came in.
The third and final death bell was when Gen Lock came out it was a waste of money. And it put the final nail in the RT coffin
Well according to Jack anyone who disagreees with their politics can go f themselves
I feel like Ray leaving also was a bell in that machine. Monty dying, Ryan’s accusations and Ray leaving really hit all the points for me to see where they were headed
How was Monty's death the first death bell? He didn't mostly write or create RWBY (he did a little bit, I believe, and he was the ideas guy.
@@Diogo85 The entirety of the world and major plot points (while he was alive) was brought forth and directed by him, as while as the lead animator/chorographer for both RWBY AND RvB
@@orionblu3 Proof? Most of the writing was made by Miles and Kerry if I'm correct.
Those rage quit days with Michael was my childhood 😢
You and me both brother
You and me both
I remember the first Rage Quit of Superman, because I had been watching Rooster Teeth for a little while and the intro followed by the anger was so jarring because it was so unlike anything they had done. It was a great time, I miss those days of RT
“Hold the fart” lads, “hold the fart”
"GODDAMNIT LUCA" echoes around the inside of my head like an old windows screensaver.
Ray saying "You can't be mad it isn't Thursday." to this very day on his streams is in reference to Ragequit which were regularly released(and sometimes recorded) on Thursdays.
Honestly proud of Geof for saying "I'm not that guy anymore. I can't do this again. I'm drowning here."
Geoff has been drowning for a while, and it feels like no one else at the company cared. Which is fucking vile wjen you remember this company was started by him and his "friends". That last clip of them playing halo together made me wanna cry. He loves those guys to this very fuckin day. I hope he gets better friends. I hope the community stands up for him now. I hope he is able to have a healthy hppy relationship with his family. We love you, Geoff. For better and for worse, you were the father figure a lot of kids craved. You raised an entire generation of nerds. Stand proud man, you earned it.
I remember Geoff speaking from the heart and everyone of his friends laughing at him.
He stayed humble while everyone around him went up their own asses.
What annoys me is that it feels like he is wheeled out to be a the dog with a missing leg. Feels like a ploy to get people to back off.
@@noblegalifreyan4551that's not what this is about though. Geoff really did take it to heart and believe that he needed to do better.
@@floatinghamstick The problem is that this isn't the first time he's come on a podcast to weep and cry for whenever a controversy happens. I don't think it's malicious or manipulative on his end I think it's just that he's kind of used as a shield by rooster teeth because people have an attachment to him since he's one of the co-founders
@@noblegalifreyan4551 honestly, I think you're giving RT management too much credit. Considering how uncoordinated and terrible they were, I wouldn't be surprised if Geoff put his hand up to handle it and RT management were just happy to have a patsy to do the work.
When you sell your successful company, your company loses its soul. They might not have been making much money when they started, but sacrifices are always made to build a small company into something great. After the sale, the only sacrifice left is the company itself.
Bruce recently said something like "I'm glad I escaped Roosterteeth" and "I hate that I generated wealth for some of these people" on stream
I might’ve been gone for years like many others, but if you’re a true fan of the originals, there’s no way you didn’t just bawl your eyes out hearing and seeing Geoff and others like Jack and Barbara be unable to keep it together. This was my first time seeing that and it’s just shattered me for all the good memories that’ve come rushing back.
Wherever they are and whatever they do, I wish nothing but utter success and joy for the rest of their lives and I thank them all for giving that dumb kid discovering the internet for the first time all the fond memories to the man/adult that kid grew up into to look back on.
LLLLLLLLET’S STOP ♥️ (R.I.P. The prime days)
The company failed due to many, many small mistakes over the course of years that for some reason nobody that was a decision maker at the company ever identified and course corrected on but an average fan could see was a mistake from a mile away. The best visualization of that was the homepage of the website going from an incredible community feed a decade ago to turning into the most generic-looking Netflix lookalike slop I've ever seen. Also when they started hiring at an insane rate at the 636 office to the point they had to move into an aircraft hanger, I knew it was a wrap. They should have hired slowly and thoughtfully and stayed at the 636 office for a decade.
Be prepared to copypasta this into the inevitable Watcher retrospective. The post-buzzfeed boys are running the same track
Directionless, in other words. They had no clear idea of what they really wanted to be, and lack the ability to fulfill what they vaguely wanted to be as well.
Death by a thousand cuts as it were
yeah, they got a big head over their growth and blew their load.
agreed entirely
i was blind to a lot of this for a while until 2019.
more so i saw some of the issues in 2017 but they were minor and few and far between i didn't think much of it but by 2019 when they kicked vic, didn't apologize for hiring a wife beater and child abuser after he was arrested for said crimes in early 2020 and then went all social justice and told old fans to fuck off for not liking politics forced in their entertainment in mid 2020 and the micah burton thing, that was when i not only stopped supporting them but also realized they had a lot more issues at play and that was also when they made stupid marketing and PR decisions after another that only hurt them in the long run
I foresaw the death of rooster teeth back in 2015 when they sold themselves to the first company full screen. Everyone thought I was crazy and thought that they can finally do bigger and better projects when in reality it turns into they do more corporate approved projects.
I was cautiously hopeful, but then when Fullscreen got bought by WB, that's when I knew the end was coming. WB has a history of killing great shows and networks like Discovery, and they cancelled the Batgirl movie after the majority of it was done simply for a tax write-off. RT would have been first on the chopping block. RvB is extremely niche, and while RWBY is popular, it doesn't have the mass appeal factor that WB wants.
I knew taking VC funding to "deliver bigger and better projects" was extreme copium, but everyone was just too hype to care.
Everyone didn't think you were crazy, people who already saw the crumbs already left.
When you sell yourself to Fullscreen you are inevitably selling yourself to WB. Online media has been experiencing snowball consolidation for decades.
Combined with the fact that big players like AT&T, eat RT sized companies daily. If they wanted to last they should’ve stayed independent.
@@materg7505 I don't believe WB owned Fullscreen at the time they bought RoosterTeeth - that acquisition came afterwards. The rest of your point still stands though.
I was confused by the Dogbark move. They should have just kept it under Achievement Hunter. They lost a lot of people who didn't want to subscribe to a new channel so the views were even lower
Maybe warner bro's trademarked it?
Yup rooster teeth currently owns the trademark to achievement hunter
The desperate attempt to keep changing names and logos without changing anything under the surface really drives home how the leadership had NO IDEA what they were doing.
Also, Dog Bark is a terrible name. It's just a rip off Cow Chop.
The entire Dog Bark thing felt like an Adult Swim bit, and not in a good way. Like they were supposed to be making fun of soulless corporate rebranding but instead were 100% serious about it.
Loss of identity was exactly what pushed me away from them. Every time I looked them up, I saw very different content than I expected as an OG Red Vs. Blue fan.
They pandered to the loudest but smallest audience and chased longtime fans away. They did this right before and during their sale in 2014.
glad im not the only one who recalls things starting to go wrong around 2014 (maybe even sligntly sooner)
@@XueYlva Also, around the time Ray left, citing things were becoming more corporate. Glad he got out early and is thriving.
And what was that audience?
@@samflood5631 You're either being disingenuous with that question, or are so ignorant of the topic it isn't worth the time to discuss it with you.
@@Clayboweebs
When these internet shows want to become Netflix it seldom works out
If I wanted to pay for something like Netflix...I'd just pay for Netflix.
Thing is, Rooster Teeth was Netflix before Netflix. They pretty much pioneered the streaming service model.
Well, Dropout worked out
@@darksaiyangoku7303yeah the FIRST model and having their separate website thrived in their best days
@@darksaiyangoku7303this is not even remotely true. Netflix definitely pioneered the model, you just haven’t read the history, and understandably have an emotional connection to RT.
Honestly rooster teeths closure isn't surprising nor is the desperate moves a lot of crew members have made for relevance as of late. The whole company had basically become a circus of controversies and poor quality and I feel like that's all anyone will remember them for anymore.
I think the silver lining is the core people that the community cared about are still gonna be putting out content. Like Gus and Barb managed to take their more successful projects independent, Gavin's producing content with the likes of Adam Savage, and Geoff's getting some decent support his project with Eric and Gavin.
I think not having the corporate strangleholds anymore will do some good for them in terms of being able to work on content they're a bit more invested into and passionate about.
That final video of the founders playing Halo together with all the technical issues that they wouldn't fix was really symbolic of how lazy and low quality their videos became towards the end.
Nah people remember the good long after the bad has faded into memory.
You may be right.
Newer people may remember them that way, but I think most of their original fans will always cherish the early days where things were gloriously imperfect. I'll remember the wonderful first 10 seasons of RvB (And the chorus trilogy and anthology season) as some of the few good memories of my teenage years.
1 thing, Slowmo guys is not roosterteeth and it never was. It was just on their website because it is Gavin free’s channel and it was popular
Edit, I changed “it was Gavin” to “it is Gavin” as he still owns the channel and I wanted to avoid confusion. Slowmo Guys is completely unaffected by this
IIRC Gavin created Slow Mo Guys specifically so he could use it on his VISA application so he could stay in the country to work at RT.
@@ozpin8329 yup. And it became a happy accident that he is literary THE slomo expert out of everyone in the entire world.
@@panrak123he had legit slow motion experience before rooster teeth, and the company kept using him for slomo so he never lost that experience. Gavin struck me as someone who could afford to act stupid because he always had real, valuable trade experience to fall back on. Same with Michael, dude was an electrician before RT.
Ironically enough, I was too young to get into Rooster Teeth in the glory days (or maybe it just never came across my feed. I had specific tastes). However I *was* an avid watcher of Slowmo Guys. I had no clue it was Gavin’s side project until people started talking about Rooster Teeth as it collapsed.
@@k.-flynn he had legit XP before but now he is litteraly #1 in the entire world when it comes to Slomo vids. if there is a special slomo shot in media. him or Dan is behind it most likley
Roosterteeth: we fired Vic bc he's a potential danger to our employees.
Also Roosterteeth: *is the danger to their own employees*
NGL the *speed* at which they fired him was what turned me off from the company permanently. Guilt irrelevant to them- only following public perception.
True.
It was never proved 100% conclusively, but it is very likely that RT had Monty Oum killed to obtain his IPs. There is just so many unnatural coincides (IPs going to the company on his death, having Monty's brother pre-selected as his VA follow up, Monty dying during "simple medical procedure" paid by RT's health insurance...) to consider anything else.
@@Florkl Same
The decline started with Ray leaving, everything and I mean EVERYTHING happened afterwards.
Including Ryan and Adam.
2022: On The Verge Of Collapse
2024: It Collapsed
Well that was fairly straightforward ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hence the fairly short video 😂
I think a lot of us saw it coming tbh, what with Geoff getting on camera crying about us bullying the poor corporate entity, Gus having long been virtue signaling at people, Joel getting fired for having the wrong political leanings, and Burnie just jettisoning himself from the company entirely. Combine all that with lackluster new shows and them taking the currents ones out to pasture and it was always meant to fail. Then there's then killing the forums, removing the comics, and trying to pretend that the late 2000's-early 2010's era didn't exist, and it makes sense that people would start to leave in droves.
@@Manablade117joel got fired for saying some crazy shit about jews. the other stuff was all fine… it was the jew shit that got him fired.
But really if they were able to keep the people that fans liked they could have survived on legacy fans… if they hired people that actually made good videos and were interesting they could have made new fans. If they didn’t let the people who made bad videos become the people who made the hiring decisions they probably could have floated for another couple years
I'd say the decay started around 2018 and 2019
@@Manablade117 Joel got canned for laughing at Gavin getting robbed or some shit like that
Joel was a funny VA but guy is a fuckin goof lmao
The clip of all of them just playing halo and genuinely laughing broke me man.
That last spark of grounded authenticity before the lights went out.
I remember Aaron tweeting about being owed wages or something from Rooster Teeth, and for some reason his ex Barbara responded basically dismissing any possible mistake or wrongdoing on the company's end (looks like around 2/4/2020, but I can't find her tweets so going off memory) and calling him bro or something. Maybe it was an old joke between them, but it seemed heated and unnecessary. Just let Accounting/HR respond to him.
Once you took a step back from the content and the parasocial relationships, the company really was very odd most of the time.
It seemed like a dream job where you just got to record yourself having fun with your friends but that’s honestly no way to run a huge company. They grew too big too fast with no game plan and they suffered for it.
Yeah I think some people ended up in positions they were not suited for
@@Gotten1888 Yeah, it was clear a large of part of the mismanagement came down to popular people being put into management positions they weren't qualified for. That said, there were plenty of problems with the qualified people like Gray, Matt, and Burnie
The problem with selling out isn't the money. We know it's not really you anymore. Humans value genuineness, you don't get that from a subsidiary of Warner Brother/Discovery. The board of directors of Warner Brothers will always have more power and if you're part of their empire, you will do as they say even if you hate it. They'll make you do anything and everything they can think of to squeeze every bit of profit out of you and then, when all the fans have finally left, they'll shut you down and write you off on their taxes. It's the way of the entertainment industry.
the whole mica/levar Burton thing is really funny because they only hired mica trying to get levar to show up on their podcast and extra life
I remember when mica was in the halo 5 videos she was so unliked that some people where asking for Lindsay instead of her
@@AdmiralRamirez7 I was one of them.
Go woke, go broke. The Off-topic episode during the pandemic when Mica was saying she was going to kick the racists out of her community or burn down the company was where i had my "this ship is sinking" moment. Like there were "racists in the community" like bro, EVERYONE loved Ray. She just wasn't funny. And she was ribbing into Geoff the entire time while he's having his soy boy rant. I love the guy to death and I felt it when he was taking about his issues with alcoholism and people talking bad about his daughter. But there was no reason for all the white guilt shit.
Inviting diversity hires without qualification is like inviting termites into a tree. They're going to take what they can get, ruin it. Then, move onto the next big thing they can leech off of.
@@AdmiralRamirez7 I only mainly watched GTA V and such with her in it... I personally dont recall her being quite as annoying as Ky lol
Seeing Geoff breakdown crying is like seeing your sweet caring grandpa cry.
I feel so bad for him witnessing the company he helped start with his best friends slowly rotting around him. In the end so many people scorned. So many lives upheaved. All happening right in front of his eyes with utterly no control.
They had a long time to make it right. This was no sudden collapse. He can cry me a river.
Geoff feels like a dog thats missing a leg you bring out to make people feel bad. It feels like hes just supposed to be this tragic figure given how his life is.
@@noblegalifreyan4551 that's exactly what he became for RT
the first few times i did truly feel bad and hoped they could change but once I started to see a lot of issues with the company and the shit behind the scenes and nothing was changing and he came out several more times that was when i realized all he had become was a mascot for a pitty party
he could have changed most things in the company and made it better. Burnie could have. All the founder and even most of the big faces could have but none of them did.
its hard to feel bad for people who can make good change and see the issues at hand and yet sit on their ass and complain about the issues at hand and not do anything to change it
Well that got bizarre quickly
It's all performative. Geoff always pulls that stunt whenever RT faces a controversy.
The only part I disagree with was RTX. nothing RT could have done to save that. I go to a lot of cons and the years after Covid were very small. It wasn’t until this year have I noticed that cons have started really filling up again. Still we lost so many medium to small cons because of Covid.
This is so true it hurts. What's extra fucked is that the big cons - Comic Con, Fan Expo, etc - feels the need to save massively on venue costs so everyone is packed like sardines on the 2 or 3 showroom floors they're renting out, compared to effectively having the entire convention center to themselves as it has been a decade prior.
I went to small and large conventions during covid and after covid. The size of the conventions i went to either stayed and grew after covid or grew through covid.
RTs handling of covid is why killed rtx
Had RT not tried to force masks at rtx in TX when they didnt have a mask mandate, they would have done fine.
Instead the ones that were covid isolationists werent gonna go anyways and the ones that were fed up with covid werent gonna go and get masked up when there were other conventions in other places that werent forcing masks. So they shrunk the potential con goers to the minority of people. Thats why I stopped going to RTX. There was no mandate so when they announced the requirement myself and my group wrote it off and went to a different convention instead.
@@STARSRav3n lol. You must be fun at parties. Anyway it’s pretty well known in the con circuit that the Covid times killed hundreds of cons. It’s not just rtx. Go touch some grass
It's funny how nobody seems to recognize the pattern. Low-key, down to earth, relatable ppl make content with heart. It gets big because of that. ..then they sell out 🗿 And everything charming about what they were making is sucked out of it. It dies out. This is a tale probably as old as time, why do people keep making this mistake
Because you realize you want to have health insurance and eventually retire
@@Slater2113 okay but do you not understand that because of that thinking, that's no longer a possibility? You'd think staying in business would be the first step in achieving that goal
Relatability leads to success, but when you become too successful nobody can relate to you anymore. The balloon had to burst at some time
@@Slater2113They seemed to be making money just fine before Fullscreen bought them. They didn't need to turn into a soulless production company to make enough to retire.
@@KuzuTomoki by the time the company is no longer sustainable, the founder has already skipped town with his bag and two fingers up. It's the whole Boomer mentality.
I think the biggest issues were hiring too many people too quickly and not addressing criticism in a meaningful way. It was all corporate blanket statements, direct denial of problems, or blaming the audience for having a problem with anything.
Remember when they just made well written, funny videos of Halo characters bobbing their heads?
I want to shout out the members of the let’s play family that died over the years too, who had amazing content but just couldn’t keep up with the pressures of the algorithm. Cow chop. Sugar Pine 7. Screw attack. Becoming an MCN was definitely part of rooster teeth’s issue.
Surprised that you didn’t bring up The Creatures since they were part of that initial “group” of outsider channels connected to RT.
But given how they ultimately fell apart due to their own mismanaged mistakes (mainly Kootra’s) not too surprising tbh.
What they did to SP7 was why I was done with these people. Their constant pressure pretty much split up a group of friends who wanted to make something fun together.
Then finding out about the controversies within RT, was just too much
Forgot cow chop was rt. But yeah I remember specifically choosing to watch cow chops content over ah and rt at the time because the dynamic between the crew was what made the channel. The lifeless additions to already popular content with figureheads drove those shows below a palatable flavor. Alex, Uber and Trevor just being klut's and doing stupid shit was peak
@@alexf0723what did they do to sugar pine 7?
@@oklin2376 they talked about it on one of the podcastsi think it was. RT basically forced them to change the shows style to a drama with plot instead of being goofy guys doing goofy things. And to rush out episodes which is what caused the burnout in the last "season" of videos
The decision to saturate their channels with mediocre sludge was not wise and turned a lot of people away. I swear they had like 20 different podcast-type shows and they were all terrible.
Or you know "Hey guys welcome to episode number *way to fucking many* of minecraft because this used to make us money and its essy to do so we are gonna milk it to the ground" content
@@noctotainlowry9246 They should've helped Ray out a bit and diversified their content. Whoever was in the big chair at the time saw the numbers that the Minecraft and GTA V Let's Plays were pulling and just forced them to make nothing but THOSE types of videos.
Can you believe they made fun of Ray for a time for making a risky life decision? If only they could see how it all panned out.
Wait, what? There was more than one season of Gen Lock? I thought it floundered and died after the first episodes aired, I heard of absolutely no one watching it or even caring about it.
I'm also shocked to hear it has more than one season. I even watched a video about it once and it completely slipped my mind.
yep they has a 2nd season and aired it on Netflix or MAX. I watched the first season on Toonami
There was indeed a 2nd season, but most of the production team from the 1st were replaced due to all the company culture and crunch issues. No one watched it and the writing took a massive nosedive so the few people who did watch it also hated it.
@@xShadowhawkx They also added in s---de for some reason. Which they did for RWBY, too.
@@donutbevil9669 although the character in Gen:Lock then came back a few episodes later, totally undermining the (badly done) drama they’d set up! Shit was laughable.
Rooster Teeth became like that dog that you say goodbye to everytime you go home because you think it might die before the next time you get to see it.
The new logo definitely proved what they had become
One thing that always made me frown was that when the Ryan thing happened, they talked about removing him where they could, but they'd already purged every trace of the RTAA that coincided with one of his victims' testimonies. They deliberately purged his lie before they even had Jack talk about removing his traces from the brand, and acted like it didn't happen ever
People are too hard on Ryan. Hope he’s doing well.
@@neurohack9038Uhh… wasn’t he fucking grooming fans?
@@neurohack9038 He's not! he tried to come back to content creation and got booted off. Hope this helps.
All he did was bang outside his marriage chill the fuck out. Like 60% of marriages have this happen
@@neurohack9038people are too hard on Adam Kovic dude got doomed by being in a way smaller scandal around the same time. Everybody says they're names together which is awful for him, Ryan may have committed many felonies with many different women.
Nothing will ever recapture the magic of an OG 2011-2012 achievement hunter let’s play. So to think of all the darkness that was behind the scenes
Man 2011 - 2013 were such nice years
Jontron and Egoraptor's Game Grumps
Super Best friends
OG AH and Rooster Teeth
A more wild west and free internet thats less corporatized
the early 2010s were filled with such optimism then the late 2010s and 2020 came by to ruin that fun
The og 6, working together to kill the enderdragon and having the lads vs gents games.
@@ImmaLittlePipI disagree. The late 2010s don't suck.
I'm still depressed how bad they spiraled out of control and existence. I've been a fan since the beginning and to see me drift away from them while they drift out of reality is crazy. R.I.P Rooster Teeth
crazy to see 4 guys who i used to watch everyday, slowly rotted away
like tears in rain
time to die
As someone already pointed out, the final video getting that much viewership is kind of poetic and probably the sign of how dense they were in their decissions.
I don't think going corporate was the problem, but how lacking their personality became. It was all about the content and numbers, whoever the talent was, it didn't matter, both to them and the audience.
When people leave, even if the content stays active, there's a portion of quality that also gets lost because the personality is gone, and you either bring something new, or die hoping that something else fills the void. On top of just Warner Bros. being worse than Microsoft in terms of killing off studios and projects left and right, this was bound to happen no matter what.
Why is it that every youtube channel that gets over a certain amount of million subs immediately screeches into doing "variety content" which literally nobody cares about? If I sub to a channel for gaming I don't want to see you make videos about blind taste testing jellybeans or buying vintage Nintendo toys from Japanese ebay.
For AH/LP, the charm was the ensemble cast doing things they enjoyed. e.g. when they sucked at games, they'd say "you don't watch us to watch us play well". So, I can see how they might see "do variety show" ought to be fun to watch.
But, yeah, I wanna see them ... try to play Halo LASO or do the GTA heists, or whatever.
Because everyone, including both the audience and the content creator, have their own tastes, opinions, and preferences. You may not care about a certain type of content but just because you don't, doesn't mean no one else does.
"hey there guys. i noticed you loved our spaghetti. now get ready for our new dish! its a chinese dish called virgin boy eggs. i think youll love it!" thats what they all do. and surprisingly it ends bad. (also thats a real dish look it up)
Nothing were as great as the days with Bruce, Lawrence, Adam & James just laughing themself half into a coma. I miss those moments. FH never was the same after the departures.
Anyone got anymore scrobbles left?
Mothers need to be aware of those precious scrobbles.
Fuck Adam.
But it really hurt me that Bruce and Lawrence left. And poor James really worked best when he was working off of them.
Bruce and Lawrence have a channel right now with Kassem G called "BroughtYouThisThing" that's on par for the best classic FH content. I'm kinda hoping that they can bring James in on some of his new free time
Don't forget Joel, Matt, and Spoole. Miss the whole crew
@@Illier1 grow up move on. Adam did....
He said sorry, got help, did his penance. Learn how to function in a society. Or is a criminal a criminal forever......
For those curious
To find a video on their channel that beats the 4 dudes on a sofa playing halo for views,
You have to go back to 2020
And it opens with a sponsorship...
I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with sponsorships but in RT's case they should have seen the writing on the wall and changed accordingly. Either by downsizing or significantly changing the direction of their videos.
@@floatinghamstick too many fingers in too many pies it seems
The last video I remember watching from RT was in 2020... So that makes sense
The craziest part is that I'm just now hearing about Dog Bark for the first time watching this...
The N word on the whiteboard incident was Jeremy and he has totally apologiesed for it as it genuinely was a misunderstanding, he was trying explain the South Park "People who annoy me" Wheel of Fortune joke where Randy drops the N bomb to Gavin and Mica unfortunately saw it with 0 context which jeremy very openly apologised for on stream
it doesn't matter how much you apologize. these people are perpetually offended. this is the audience they wanted to pander to.
She is the daughter of Lavar Burton who is an extreme leftist, BLM white hater. I hate that is the truth because I liked Reading Rainbow as a kid and I loved Star Trek TNG but it's the truth. No way you could ever explain the hilarious South Park joke to her. I'm not going to lie and say I have a ton of black friends but the few black guys I do know LOVED that episode. She will ALWAYS be looking for a reason to be offended, so she will find it every time.
Probably usues it all the time.
@@The-House-Cat-777 who, Jeremy? The dude only cares about making people happy, he wouldn't use it even if his life depended on it
Honestly, a very funny story. Just imagining Jeremy trying to explain a very American Joke to a British man is classic RT.
i said it to myself when they posted their goodbye stream that its incredibly funny and ironic that their goodbye stream is one of their most viewed videos in the last few months if not years.
I remember discovering Rooster Teeth when I was in high school back in 2011, I started by watching Red vs Blue, then that lead me to Achievement Hunter, Animated Adventures, RT Shorts and eventually I started watching all of their content, and you could see the passion and humor behind it, it all felt so genuine, and I think that's what drew us to them in the first place, just how real and down to earth they were is what made them so captivating.
God, I remember thinking working for Rooster Teeth would be a dream come true because they seem to genuinely enjoy what they did and you could feel the love they put into their content, even if it wasn't the best in terms of production quality.
I think it was around the time of the whole Vic Mignogna situation that I started to slowly drift away from RT, their content was on the decline, the old crew were leaving in droves, and, quite frankly, there were more entertaining things to occupy my time with.
It wasn't until the workplace mistreatment scandals came out that I finally unsubscribed, for me, that's when Rooster Teeth truly died, everything after was just the death march of the soulless, empty husk of a once great company, shuffling its way toward its inevitable end.
I'm sorry for the long rant, it's just that I, like all of you, have so many fond memories of Rooster Teeth and it breaks my heart to see it end like this.
I resent the decisions they made that brought them to this point.
I despise the soulless entities that swooped in and tore this once great company appart.
I mourn what came before and the blissful days gone by.
R.I.P Rooster Teeth, we thank you for years of entertainment, and hope for the best for those who must now pick up the pieces of their shattered dream.
It's always fascinating -- and rather heartbreaking -- how so many of these rise-and-fall stories spring from the same source:
The moment you sell out, go corporate or just stop doing it for fun, it's over.
It's like these people just forget where they came from and that it was their genuine passion for what they did that drew in their fanbase, not the scope of their projects or their production values. The moment they stopped having fun, so did their fanbase.
I keep thinking of the movie The Menu. Spoilers if you care:
The main villain of the film wants to kill an audience of high and mighty yuppies and himself because he no longer enjoys cooking. This guy was a major michelin star chef who had it all, but he didn't enjoy it one bit. The heroine of the film then finds out that he used to be a simple fry cook. At the end of the movie, she survives because she asks him to make a simple cheeseburger, not anything fancy, just a cheeseburger. That moment was a rare time where he enjoyed cooking. After that, he let her go.
I keep thinking about these people losing their passion because they went corporate, or made it into a job, and I go back to this movie.
Yes, precisely. It's the simple things in life that make all the difference, and one should never sacrifice their happiness for profit.
Just look at the final segment of this video: the 4 founders just sitting down and having fun together. That's ALL their fanbase ever wanted to see of them, and the video's inordinately high view count proves it. It's a shame they couldn't have realized this any sooner.
This was a very apt and surgical summary of what we as a fan base had to witness. Thank you for doing this without adding more salt to the wound. Thank you
I was a huge fan of Rooster Teeth growing up. I got introduced to RvB and then eventually Achievement Hunter. I remember watching the boys do Lets Play, getting me to always religiously make the Tower of Pimps in every minecraft world I was in. They were even my first introduction to Podcast as I never knew what that was, listening to hours of endless jokes and conversations........ i wanna say around 2015 to 2016 is when I stopped, with the last video i remember being when they played D&D and got me into the game(which inevitably introduced me to Critical Role). I'll always remember the good times, and its sad to see it end in this way.
PS Can't see Achievement Hunters the same way due to Ryan
Die a hero, or live long enough to be a villain. In rooster teeth's case, they died a villain.
Did they?
I haven’t watched Funhaus in a few years but seeing Elyse’s posts on instagram about closing down shop hit me a little harder than I would like to admit. The glory days of Funhaus were some sort of idiotic magic that had me doubled over in laughter,
Imo, Adam didn't deserve to get dragged down with Ryan. His thing was nowhere near as bad.
@@floatinghamstick i think Adam's thing came at the worst time possible while the whole company was dealing with the Ryan controversy and i guess another scandal was just more than they could handle so he had to get dragged down
it's still a horrible thing to do even if its nowhere near as horrible as what Ryan allegedly did
Geoff's breakdown on camera always gets me. Dude went through personal and professional hell for RT, and now it's dead.
Boohoo. It's not like his kid died. There's no reason to cry.
@@germen343 well god bless you man, I hope you never start a project and watch it get swallowed up by corporate malfeasance and have to feel the same way
It shouldve stayed as a bunch of friends hanging out. Not a forced corporation of "characters"
@RayTheomo You ain't wrong. Wonder what Rooster Teeth looks like in a parallel universe where Fullscreen/AT&T/whoever else never gets involved
That he sold to a company of his own free will, he can cry a river@@Veishan
You hit the nail on the head when you basically said, "Rooster Teeth died when it stopped hiring fans."
I mean roosterteeth also started changing their format to podcasts and shitty buzzfeed tier vids
@Fauwkes That was waaaay after what I said though.
Rooster teeth (specifically the achievement hunter and let's play channels) were such a big part of my life in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I would always be so excited to watch their latest upload. Their content helped me get through a lot back in those days. The banter and chemistry between the original crew and even some of the first newer members like Jeremy was just perfect. I'll always look back at those videos with great memories. Between the Minecraft, GTA, and so many other videos of that time. Those really were the golden years.
Whenever someone mentions GenLock my mind flashes to that horrendous S2 bedroom scene. We don't talk about GenLock
one of the writers of season 2 is writing a new Gundam series coming out on Netflix, and as expected it looks terrible and screams Zeon apologist wankfest
Watched season 1 of gen:LOCK and LOVED it, had a couple pacing issues but overall a nice story of a team coming together. and ofc badass action both on the ground and in mechs.
I have no interest in ever fully watching season 2.
What was the bedroom scene
I didn't even know GenLock existed after it was first advertised. I thought it just died in a hole somewhere after the first few episodes. I never saw anyone talking about it and Joon's video is the first time I've ever heard it had a second season.
@@blackrose8418idk banging
Who would have thought that hiring noname people to do podcasts and gaming videos would kill the personality driven channel.
Coudln't have said it better myself. It was like a familly run business back then and it just worked.
I spent most of my College days 2011-2015 OBSESSED with RT. They helped me get into video, I started making community videos and even got my own show on their community channel before Nintendo started all those takedowns. Then my humor evolved, I stopped laughing at all the crude jokes, they got old. People left, new people came in, it was NOT the company I became a fan of. I definitely think they have been on borrowed time for years, it's a shame.
This was exactly when I was really into them too, then I found funhaus and sort of transitioned to them over time but once the core crew left I fell off of them too. So thankful for the memories
to this day I think my favorite series of content outside of RvB was the Lets Play Halo LASO (with the main cast of Ryan, Gavin, and any of the Geoff, Jack, Micheal, or Alfreado.)
The phrases and terms that came out of their games and struggles. "front-back" being the one I still use sometimes.
I have never returned to since everything went down with Ryan. and I think that was the last piece of "new" content I ever watched from them after that.
It's sad to see Geoff give everything he could to hold the company he loved together. If he ever starts a personal channel/company, I'd love to support it just do he doesn't feel like he failed.
This was a long time coming. Rooster teeth was a big part of my childhood from Red VS ble to their silly game videos, achievement hunter series, let's plays, Micheal doing his rage videos. But I knew they were slated to die as soon as they started becoming super PC and focusing on podcasts rather than what their channel used to be. As soon as they made that shift I knew they were over. I'm honestly surprised they lasted this long.
RIP roosterteeth. But yall did this to yourself.
I remember being pissed at how nomad of nowhere was treated and seeing how it was butchered by a different project is just even more rage enducing
Jesus, seeing Kerry in that last segment makes me realize just how old I am. I remember when I was in high school and he was a fresh face at the company. Now he looks so old.
I'd imagine working in RTAnimation ages you too
@@thejusmarGiven how much stress they put you through, definitely.
Pretty much think he's not going to be able to move on from RT, which he destroyed
For real, the dude looked like a newborn baby when he first joined.
Michael looks way older and almost unrecognizable as well. Meanwhile Trevor and Alfredo look like they haven't aged a day haha
Oh I thought you meant one of the main guys kids
Mega64 never lost their identity and they own 100% of their company and even found ways to continue their momentum through covid. If you want to survive in this industry, be like them
Rooster Teeth should've never tried to be this big production company. I don't know how many people work for Mega64 (never really watched much of their stuff) but it's probably not the hundreds that worked for RT.
@@SearedBooks it’s a small staff, and they’re masters at producing content on a low budget.
Not sure who Mega64 are, but The Yogscast was similar to early days Rooster Teeth too. The Yogscast is still around and still successful. So they are something to look up to as well
@@BanditLeader I think as long as you stay to your core and stay independent. You have a better shot at longevity at the cost of numbers
I do love that the people who deserve to continue are continuing. Gavin, Geoff, Michael, everyone who made it what it was and not those who felt entitled to it.
Full Screen acquisition was the beginning of the end.
I was a "first member" for almost 15 years i think. SO I suppose you could say i "had my finger on the pulse of this thing" I could see things changing subtly.
There are several lessons any aspiring media owner should take from Roosterteeth, closing down like this. The largest one, in my strong opinion; Never EVER involve yourself with expanding your business through investors. They WILL gut your company in the long-term. You will never keep profits and growth going long enough. That ship for businesses, has sailed. The other important lessons; do not outpace your natural company growth. Very important to know that growing a company slower, will help during tough times. Other important social business/customer relations lessons; AVOID being overtly political one way or another. Best to stay middle road. The majority of time when activists demand you take a stance on some thing, they aren't even your target audience. They just want your word on something, and they move onto the next target. You have more risk alienating your actual customer/audience core. Stick to "We are here to provide this or that, not give lectures", it will do better long-term. Finally; when it comes to entertainment. While it is good to stand up for yourself, while also letting major criticisms in one ear and out the other. Pick and choose your battles. DO NOT ALIENATE OR INSULT YOUR AUDIENCE. Your audience is the one holding all the cards in their favor, and are far less willing to put up with being insulted all the time. It is time for media businesses to actually take care for their core audience, rather than actively/publicly insulting them.
Roosterteeth in the end, learned all of these lessons the hard way. They no longer exist as a company, they took investors to grow, the investors demand high returns. Got bought out, and the buyouts gutted their core stories, while hating their core audience, and caving to non-audience activists. All that came from it was a sinking ship that no one cared to save.
Hear, hear.
I heard that Rooster Teeth was considered unprofitable for about a decade before they ended up actually closing down
It's disheartening how often we see things like this.
People liked them because they were real, they weren't corporate despite their size, but the company that bought them didn't want what they were and so they died as a result.
@SearedBooks I do get it. I see passion in film all the time. It does not always mean quality, very obvious. Take my favorite indie film for instance; Who Killed Captain Alex (I literally buy their merch). Absolute passion projects. On an enormously small budget (which sounds like one hoot of an oximoron). It takes a long time to produce, there is VERY little money that goes into it. So it's a very niche entertainment product as a result. But the best part is he's in charge of his vision, some can crash and burn, but he's in charge of it. Major industry investment would demolish his image of film. While getting investments are a hugee boon to a budget and can help move a project along easier, it abruptly opens the project up to editorial decisions. Which so rapidly become demands, and then amalgamated processes. It becomes harder and harder to produce entertainment due to budgets and what people do want for entertainment. But getting outside money to appease an audience means outside voices get a say, no one is pleased. Vultures I tell you. You need the money, but where that money flows from is a bad place. Stick small, avoid investors. Grassroots media may be seriously low budget, but more often it has more passion.
Very eloquently put. Every reason you've stated, I can only think attributes to why Steam, and Valve by extension, is so big.
Wendy's only get away with snide tweets because they had basically no online presence before that, so it's not like there were existing 'fans' who would be annoyed by the change. RoosterTeeth already had a very specific kind of fan, and had for a very very long time. So suddenly shifting it into Reddit-tier mean tweets is silly beyond any explanation.
Clearly this is just yet another case of something made with passion that the creators eventually were done with, but the husk was sold to passionless corporate suits who wanted to parade it as long as they felt there was enough goodwill to convert into money. See: Bethesda post-Oblivion, Bungie/343 after Reach, Call of Duty sometime before Ghosts, Blizzard around the time of the activision merge, etc, etc.
"We're a Real Company Now" Mark Kern, Formerly of Blizzard Entertainment.
Can't Remember the Podcast i heard this from or what the exact context of it was,
but it really hit me as to why a lot of entertainment studios lose touch with their audience.
I think we can boil it down to a couple main things. Rooster teeth selling out, hiring practices, and toxic drama actors and politics.
Agreed, they lost integrity big time.
Ray walking down that tunnel in his farewell was one of the big signs that things were ending fast. The loss of Monty was also a bookmark
This hurts... Goodbye Geoff, Jack, Michael and Gavin... Goodbye Achievement Hunter!
Thats crazy that Joel wasnt included with that last video together. Him leaving for me was the first really big strike of RT's downfall
As much as people are too sensitive now a days he should’ve never threatened to take a weapon to the workplace and think it was an okay thing to do. A few years earlier when they fired Kathleen (Tex) who may not have been a founding member but was there since the beginning and was an important part of all of RT’s early things especially with the fans from interactions to RTX and everything. When they terminated her I knew RT was falling apart then the Joel stuff happened then Burnie left, apart from voicing Tucker, Jason had little to no involvement with RT despite being a founding member himself and being active in the early years. The writing was on the wall. I personally only kept up to see what they were doing with Red vs Blue
@@josecano9210People aren't too sensitive nowadays, people have ALWAYS been too sensitive. This isn't new.
@@josecano9210he claimed to have never owned a gun let alone having taking one to work. The gun to work thing was just a rumor that spiraled from my understanding. There was no evidence that anybody ever to back the claims either.
Pretty much what it has been actually chalked up to is the fact that he isnt of the same political ideology as the rest of RT and he popped off on twitter during covid. He didnt support lockdowns, hated the riots, talked shit about antifa, didnt get along with Jack, etc
@@darksaiyangoku7303technically you aren’t wrong. But they weren’t plaguing this community as much until i wanna say after like 2020 maybe even earlier
Between the controversies, the mismatched who’s who of people that no one really cares about, the deaths, the firings, those who left when they did. It is amazing how they lasted so long.
Geoff laughing at the very end is heartbreaking. I stopped watching RT back when Monty died, and I missed all of the bad stuff. It was really rough to see how things turned out. I remember the excitement they had every time they needed to move somewhere bigger, and the beginning of each new project.
I used to love rooster teeth back in high school. Crazy that they fell off
This video was awesome, informative and super engaging. Can’t wait to see more!