UPDATE: As of today, the 6th of March 2024, Rooster Teeth has announced that they will shut down after 21 years of operation: variety.com/2024/digital/news/rooster-teeth-shutting-down-warner-bros-discovery-1235931953/
I saw a comment on another video saying that the loss of Rooster Teeth is "Like losing a loved one to dementia , its certainly sad but it was inevitable and they werent themselves by the end so you feel like you lost them a long time ago"
@@Fadaar I have the RvB dvds up to a certain point, I'll likely wind up getting them all but the golden years are ages ago. Hoping that people have start archiving a bunch of the Achievement Hunter videos just in case, given that the website is going offline in less than a month (May 15th)
I can't think of a better analogy than this, nailed it. After Burny and Matt sold RT and it was no longer in their hands it was only a matter of time. Still, I can't believe Warner Bros. ended up with RT and fast tracked the downfall.
I used to watched them back in the 56k era and it used to take 2-3 hours just download a 3-5 mins episodes of RvB! To me, they just became too coperate especially when they moved to a third and larger building to accomendate the many new staffs they had hired! I lost interest in the group as a whole somewhere with RWBY season 9 but I certain was was sooner than that!
This isn't a good analogy. A common misconception is that HR departments are there to protect workers, it's not. It's there to protect the company from liability in what happens with the workers. If Rooster Teeth was never in legal trouble because of how HR handled things, HR worked as intended.
@@Zirp-what zirp said. HR is there to protect the image and reputation of the company not the employees. If you’ve ever lost a job in an unfair way or dealt with discrimination in the workplace you will find this out.
@@Zirp- is this how bleak it is in america? im from nz and when i was harassed at work the person was immediately fired - it was a company probably the same size as RT. surely part of HR's job is to stop the disgruntled employee from seeking legal action or slamming the company's rep? shouldn't that incentivise them to fix shit?
I don't remember exactly why, but I do remember thinking back then that, when Burnie Burns left Rooster Teeth, it felt less like a fond farewell and more like he was getting outta dodge...
I honestly felt like Brunie was trying to maintain a positive work environment and be that guy. But he was either constantly was fazed out of discussions or straight up outvoted. He saw the writing on the wall and said “I am getting out while I can still work in Media if I even want to.”
Completely agree. Burnie is the man and left at the perfect time. I will give him the most credit for their success over the years and the least blame for the downfall. Plus he was amazing on podcast and shorts
When a company goes from friends goofing around and making cool stuff to corporate greed and pushing out stuff you’re not passionate about you’re going to lose your fans
I'd argue that when your company of friends habitually treats newer employees like dirt, and refuses to learn how to be better managers and leaders, the rot is deep rooted long before the corporate buyout. Doesn't help when those fans defend old guard bullshit long after it's clear the things they loved aren't worth ruining lives.
The reason i watched rooster teeth was because it was just a couple of friends playing scuffed video games together and doing creative challenges. Not only that, they were actually doing achievement videos. It all went downhill with Ray leaving and turning it into a corporation. After a while, Ray confirmed he was tired of doing Minecraft videos after the 50th episode. I think that was the start. All they cared about was numbers.
3:51 - Honestly though for me, as someone who was a HUGE Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter fan at the time, Ray leaving is a very important point. I feel like this was also around the time the quantity of their content kept increasing but the quality of their content kept decreasing.
yea jeremy saved AH but when others started to back off and others came in is when it started to go down. jeremys dunce cap on jacks statue in minecraft was a great moment.
This may be because I came in late however I felt that the quality of AH videos was still pretty great even after Ray left. People had a lot of issues with Trevor and Alfredo but I usually think that was just by preference, they were still people having fun. I think the quality actually started going down at ~2018-19, which was when RT was pushing for more live-action shows and you could see people were being stretched thin. They'd suddenly had to split the team and you'd have one fly off across the country while the others worked overtime to create videos and back and forth.
If you ever go to HR get it documented so when you get a lawyer; YES you should get a lawyer, they can't say "well we didn't know we were infringing on their rights, they never told us"
Just going to give an honorable mention for 3 more big things that happened 1. Gray Haddock embezzled money from the company to support his own creative project while others were left trying to figure out what happened until after he left 2. Rooster Tooth losing its credibility as an employer in hiring sites like glassdoor. To quote/paraphrase one of the actual HR people an ex-employee reported "we're rooster teeth, people would pay **us** money to work here." followed by people getting laid off, fired, or quitting in large numbers on account of how the company and people in it worked. 3. Them losing their Studio office and moving into their new area, the basement level of an office building, which is simultaneously a huge downsize compared to before and has almost all of its employees next to each other and the set/animation capture room sharing the same space
@@DivusMagus I mean he was the head of their animation project, I'd imagine that's his job. I think people are conflating it being bad to him stealing money but it was just really bad.
@@Cheezus i dont know about stealing but i do remember they said he spent the amount of money for 2 seasons in one and that was why he was fired. was that a cover? i dont know but they did say he lost them money.
@@stonecoldsteverharvey7862 Yep 💯 agreed. How they treated Joel on his comments about 2020 having a different opinion, and fired him for that while RT turned into far left woke company. I Really dont feel too bad about this shut down! I do miss the 2011-2015 Golden Days
@@stonecoldsteverharvey7862 Exactly. Look at all those "woke" companies out there which are so broke. Like, ya know, Disney. So broke. Stop with this nonsense. Be more like a dog.
I mean Red State Ryan is one of the bright spots on the channel as well as James and Elyse but I'm not really getting warm with the other cast. Sure they're talented and doing good work but it's not my style of humor anymore.
It doesn't shock me to learn AH has been shut down. As a long-time fan, I went back after the Ryan situation to support AH after drifting away. The content was unrecognizable, though. It was Michael and Jack surrounded by a cast of milquetoast strangers still playing GTA V. It didn't even feel like they cursed as much. I remembered quickly why I left.
I just remember watching one of their TTT videos and suddenly realising "wait, none of the people are started watching this channel for are in this video", went through the recent uploads and it was the same story so i left. I watched AH for the absolute chaos of their lets plays, then all of a sudden i feel like I'm almost watching a kids tv show with how watered down it was
@@mattt525 It is part of RT unfortunately. No idea what will happen at this point. I'm hoping they go independent and start Patreon or something so they can keep making videos without worrying about corporate overlords.
I remeber og roosterteeth where geoff would bragg about pulling his pants down and showing his junk to gavin at random times during work and other such antics. Stuff like that doesnt survive roosterteeth becoming corporatized but also explains the atmosphere that caused all the drama later on when people dont adapt to it.
It's fine when it's close friends but as soon as you start hiring people that you don't know and may or may not share your sense of humor you either need to respect that or fire somebody for not wanting to see your ballsack 🤷♂️
Yeah. That kinda stuff can fly when ur all friends who gets each other’s jokes and sense of humor. But when u start hiring outsiders who aren’t used to that, that kinda stops becoming a tolerable thing. The OG members never grew out of their college antics, which u can’t not do if ur gonna go full corporate.
Well as of about an hour or so ago they are shut down. Rest in peace to a huge part of my childhood, Watching The Six Original Achievement Hunters play cops and Crooks gave me so many happy memories as a kid, the achievement hunter vibe, at least in their first office, was my dream job.
Not saying it's the case in RT, but HR is generally useless, and this is coming from someone who's wife is a director of HR (and hates her life). She says it herself. She's just a "middle-man" who can only do what ownership tells her to do. Even when she goes outside of their guidance to do anything pro-employee, they immediately attack her and blame her and tell her not to do anything else. It's crazy. It's the executives that are mostly to blame...
@@iceman333933 it's in the name the human resource department, we are just a resource to be exploited. We also work for the same people, so why would people think they are on the worker's side?
It's still so funny that when they were acquired by full-screen and people complained that it would change RT and they were selling out, that they said "Full-screen will only help make our content better". Yeah, they had a couple higher budget projects because of the purchase. But then Full-screen QUICKLY realized they weren't getting the profits they wanted and started demanding more output. So RT and Achievement Hunter started pumping out more (but less enthusiastic) content. Then when that wasn't enough, Fullscreen sold them to Sprint or whatever. They TOO realized it wasn't enough profit for multinational companies and demanded they fire half their employees and even THAT wasn't enough so they sold to WB. Who of course inherited all the scandals and the lackluster mass produced passionless content and now we're here 😅
Selling the company was the worst idea they could have had. I mean they'd probably still be in the crapper but they'd have not had to go nuts making projects to appease a big corp.
None of those companies micro-managed their hiring practices. RT kept hiring worse people and it led to this outcome. I get it's easy to blame these bigger companies but at the end of the day NONE of these people will put any blame on themselves and who they hired because they've either drank the Kool-Aid or don't want to be ostracized by one of the most unwelcoming, unfriendly environments to exist. Nothing is as toxic as the ideologues in Austin, who berate anyone who will not agree on 100% of their ideas and opinions at every given moment.
I stopped watching completely a year or two after they sold because the company lost what made rooster teeth, they started making way too many shows and adding way too many talents I didn't know nor care about. My favorite thing used to be the RT podcast but then they started making 45 other podcast and it diluted everything.
@@matx6666This is true. Off Topic was probably the Second best podcast next to the RT Podcast, but once they started bringing in an entire cast of people I never heard of nor cared about, it just did not seem entertaining to watch anymore.
I watched Funhaus at its peaktime ten years ago. „Demodisk“ was the best, especially the chemistry of James Willems, Bruce Greene and Adam Kovic was top notch humour. Sad that it didn’t last.
He was amazing in a group, but his livestreams are so unwatchable. 90% "THANKS SOANDSO FOR THE SUB WOO BITS HEY DONT FORGET THAT HYPE TRAIN DOOT DOOT" @@xXRangersDestinyXx
I think after Burnie left, you could see things were starting to fall apart. He definitely saw the writing on the wall and left at the opportune moment to start a new life in Scotland. Then after the Adam/Ryan situation broke, that shattered what remained of anything positive about RT/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus. It was never the same again. I'm genuinely sad that RT is shutting down. I'd been a fan since 2009. RvB was one of the first things I'd really got into and back then they seemed unstoppable. I genuinely hope that all those who got laid off end up finding other work and finding success elsewhere.
Bernie left for Scotland before he got exposed as advocating the pedophile atmosphere of Ryan and the bashing of the fans. He didn't get out at the "opportune time" he ran like a bitch lol
Burnie didn't see any writing on the wall, he and Matt specifically caused the company to start sinking and took off before anyone else caught on, Joel has said he was aware they were leaving well before they did but he couldn't say anything after getting fired due to an NDA. They jumped ship and left Geoff to fend for himself with his hands tied and his only support alienated
Also, I hate Adam being lumped in with Ryan. There's a gigantic difference morally and legally between what they both did. Adam had to be let go because it happened at work, but other than that, it's not really a bad thing. The Ryan thing is pretty bad overall.
When Ray left in 2014. He was like the soul of achievement hunter. Like content of achievement hunter wasn't as good anymore. Ray had the same feelings as everyone else. Everyone was burnt out, he was the one who just left and everyone stayed. Being burnt out and not taking care of workers and "crunching". It has many effects. Ray got out when the building was starting to burn.
agreed. I loved the crew of michael, gavin, geoff, ray and jack, excluding the last member for his scandal but that crew was where it was at and after ray left it really did feel like a huge part of what made those videos enjoyable had left with him. I did stay because i loved michael, gavin and geoffs banter just as much but then geoff started to step back and then i knew it wasn't gonna be the same anymore and stopped watching them
We obviously don't know all the reasons, but Jeremy HAS said that he became a part time employee because he wanted to stay near family after they moved back home out of state during the pandemic
I loved Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter. I grew up with them since the dawn of RUclips in 2008. As I got older, I felt the magic would never end. Little by little I felt as if the company turned its back on me. It's sad because to this day I still watch old content and smile with a tear in my eye, seeing who I used to call Rockstars become a former shadow of themselves.
Yes and this is a reminder that Monica Rial is a bitch along with the rest of the major DBZ cast. Also how Sean Schimel still gets voice acting roles even after it's known publicly how much of a terrible person he is, is incredibly beyond me.
The reason why he was fired from RT and Funimation was because an internal investigation was performed when other voice actors filed complaints against his behavior towards them and then his previous behavior towards fans started to bubble to the surface. There's apparently a giant forum thread that was started almost two decades ago tracking Vic's life and behavior. Mostly just people talking about how creeped out they were because of their interactions with him.
The situation was used to drop Vic but he had a notorious rep already for being a gross creep with fans (hosting "private bible study" at conventions with ONLY female fans is a bad look to start)
The allegations against Vic were mostly made up and the ones that weren't were exaggerated to make Vic look bad. The worst Vic was guilty of was cheating on his woman, which was neither Funimation nor Rooster Teeth's business and therefore not a fireable offense.
@Worm-revolver It was proven the so called "internal investigation" was anything, but an investigation as the woman who conducted it didn't really do anything. Plus, the other VAs like Monica Rial, Jamie Marchie, Sean Schemmel, Chris Sabat nd such all hated him yet they all pretended like he was family. Hell, Monica Rial said Vic assaulted her a decade ago and then kept being his so call friend. Meanwhile, Sean Schemmel and Chris Sabat were doing worse and they still got the armor because Sabat owns his own dub studio and even some female VAs said he hold casting couches. Yet noone says anything about them.
Early days it felt like I was hanging out with mates when I listened/watched, then it just got further and further away from that concept. Absolutely terrible from about 2016 onward.
@@TheFingledorf Yeah, he broke a lot of people's brains, you can see it in one of the RT podcasts where Gus openly says they're ditching the no politics rule for conversations, that's basically when I stopped watching it because I watched for stupid stories, not to hear a bunch of americans act like a politician they don't like is gonna bring about the end times.
You nailed it, many people couldn't keep their stupid opinions to themselves during that time and RT fully embraced the political word-vomit, alienating many fans. I'd dropped out around 2014 but heard nothing good about them after that.
I was a huge fan of achievement hunter back in 2013 and watched almost every vid. I got excited to come home from work every Friday to watch the next Minecraft let’s play and grew to love Ray. He became my favourite, he was so funny and made the videos worth watching. When he left I slowly stopped watching until i stopped all together as it wasn’t that great anymore. Gavin had his moments but it wasn’t the same. When I saw the whole Ryan situation I thought it was a joke. It’s when I found this channel and loved the content of news you bring. Keep up the good work
Literally the same. I remember watching their GTA and Minecraft lets plays and they were so good. Loved it. After Ray left I also quit watching. It seems he made a good choice leaving cause he seems to be doing well on twitch. I might have to rewatch those playthroughs sometime.
@@sexybeast104 yeah man. I need to do that too. Some of those old vids are amazing and still funny. I follow him on RUclips and watch a lot of his vids. Especially the resident evil and lethal company vids. The group he has in there is perfect, brings back old AH memories.
@@moz2552 Ray has a video of him watching around 10 years of content from his time at RT and his streams. He also tells some stories of his time there as well.
The only time you should go to HR is so that you can later prove in court that you did try to address the problem with the company and they chose to ignore your rights. A lawyer will be more helpful than a HR rep
I think mentioning Geoff's sabbatical is important. There was a time where another founder of the company needed to take a step back and disconnect from the company for reasons unknown. And was a raging alcoholic at some point.
I remember I loved achievement hunter, I discovered them in 2013 and around the time Covid happened I just fell out of love and found that I wouldn’t watch their videos anymore, the fun and the humor felt like it was gone, it just felt so dead, I wish they could’ve lasted forever, but all good things must come to an end
That's about the time I found them and I'd binge old episodes and even put them on in the background as I did other stuff. I started to have issues with them when they just straight up started bullying Matt endlessly.
I remember my first ever exposure to RT was one of the 'Geoff's Tower' episodes of LP Minecraft. I was surfing minecraft build vids at the time and randomly clicked that one...not what I was expecting and I'm not entirely sure why I stuck with it but there was something in the way these 4 or 5 guys, who were strangers to me, interacted with each other and by context you could tell they were actually doing this for a job - in an actual office...what? - and someone called 'Jack' was missing because they had a dentist appointment. I was hooked, and it was a delight finding more and more of their content, the live action stuff, and the RT podcast. What underpinned it all for me was the friendship, the small close knit community feel of the place. Once Ray left it just felt like death from a thousand cuts, every new face detracted rather than added to the experience, there came a point where I didn't recognise anyone in the videos, and didn't care enough to get to know them - it's honestly been years since I watched any content and that was basically just the Gavin and Michael stuff. Not really seen any F**kface yet but it's on my radar - Geoff's a diamond and his friendship with Gavin was possibly the best part of it all back in the day.
As someone who basically grew up with Rooster teeth in the 2010's, seeing the way they went was terrible. I began to hate them for what they had become for the fans. seeing now that they are shutting down, I'm not surprised but i am sad that one of the things that got me through my toughest moments as a teenager is gone.
Wow! I remember way back when the drama first broke I made a comment on your video and you had less than 1k subs. I am so glad to see you at over 22k! Thats ballin my dude!
I agree. He was my favorite personality in AH. In retrospect though, I think that decision to take a step back was best for himself at the time. The newer videos became unwatchable. And the older ones are tainted by Ryan and other controversies. So it’s hard to go and rewatch their good content to reminisce. They’re just gone.
I quit watching rooster teeth and achievement Hunter way before all of these things happened. But if I would have stuck with it, Geoff walking away would probably have been the last time I watched it
@@ItsGamingFancy even then If they promised you pay or if you were told there is no pay. Then thats on you, be an adult and stand up for yourself and stop crying about it on social media.
@Fistero This is like saying "just leave the abuse relationship" lmao. People get stuck in jobs for all sorts of reasons. I don't see why your response is to criticize the unpaid worker and not the company that neglected to pay them or treat them fairly. That's just bootlicking bro. If you're gonna take time out of your day to criticize someone in a youtube comment and you choose the unpaid worker who got dogged on relentlessly for years? Weird choice. We're humans. We make irrational decisions. But hurting others is never excusable and we can't focus our attention on the irrationality of a victim. If you can't rationalize a reason someone would work unpaid or with little pay for a year, then that means you lack empathy more than they lack sense. Perhaps you'd ought to focus on your own flaws rather than those of someone whose long since had to overcome their challenges.
Roosterteeth was my generations favourite entertainment. We watched red VS blue, rage quit, and acheivment hunter religiously. They were the Original lets players. But we grew up and the content quality dropped.
The only thing that makes me sad about the end of rooster teeth is the OGs that stuck it out and tried to keep it alive for so long. I almost wish they had killed it with dignity years ago, before it got super bad.
Am I the only person who feels that Joel’s comments weren’t actually that controversial, rather, that Rooster Teeth got caught up in the polar opposite of the political spectrum, so they took his comments as much worse than they actually were?
Joel's comments were unprofessional and poorly timed but we saw people at the company say even worse things from the opposite end of the spectrum and meet no repercussions.
It’s funny that he was posting his opinions on his personal SM account but because his political views weren’t shared with the bosses he was fired. Mica Burton was encouraged to shared her views on the podcast by her boss and took the opportunity for the company to grift and pander to her because she was a black woman.
Micah Burton becoming political on Off Topic was what drove me away, that's not why I watched their stuff. But hearing afterwards how she was treated by RT solidified me never supporting them ever again.
@@Gemmycobson nothing. That's the problem with hiring fans, especially millennials. They infest things then change them to fit their narrow minded ideals.
This randomly came across my recommends, so I'll toss in two cents: I was all super pro RT, until Shane Newville released his open letter, which - after a bit of digging around - led to me eventually hating RT. That open letter deserves a section in this video; RT showed theirs colors well before 2020.
With regards to Mica, I've heard very credible tales, by people who were close to/worked for the Overwatch League, that she was an absolute demon. Started fires everywhere, and if she didn't like you, she'd tell everyone you were racist, sexist, etc. Just a legitimately terrible person from what I've heard, so I highly doubt any of her accusations were credible
She was for sure hated by quite a few people. She was a nepotism hire and when the audience pointed it out, RT staff had to stick up for her. What happens with that is it creates a sense of "you're making me lie for your sake of fake righteous indignation". Whether people realize it or not, you begin to resent someone who forces you to play along with an obvious lie -- the only ones who didn't have a problem with her are either cowards or Kool-Aid drinkers.
I completely believe that people just didn't like mica because she was insufferable, and nobody wanted to listen to the spoiled brat complain about non issues. How dare anyone dissagree with her, though. After all, she is a black lesbian so she must be right about everything, which Im sure management reinforced for her. Then, Joel being fired because he didnt cowtow to the liberal culture and political ideals. Roosterteeth became an activist organization to me, and I could no longer care about them.
Born with every silver spoon in her mouth and it has never been enough for her. She was even hanging on the coattails of Critical Role for quite some time, despite still having no personality or bringing anything interesting
She was born into a place of privilege. She's used to getting her way and uses victimhood and wealth to get anything she wants. I'm sure she's the type of person who'd try to flaunt the suffering of her slave ancestors as if it were her own.
For me, the nail in the coffin was the Ryan situation. I was already kind of losing interest around when Fiona joined, not because of her, but because I felt like I was growing out of Achievement Hunter. When that Ryan news hit, it hit like a truck, and after that, I just couldn't bring myself to continue watching Rooster Teeth. Nothing felt the same
Stopped watching during prime achievement hunter, lets play, RT podcast days. I stopped when i left high school and went on to the army and moved on with my life, i just randomly thought of the rooster teeth gang and am just now learning about all this chaos and downfall. A part of me is happy that i stopped watching when things were peak, another part of me feels if i stuck around and engaged along with others maybe something would have gone different. Many great memories, Geoff, Jack, Michael, Burnie, Gus, Ray etc. I'll cherish some of those memories forever.
I had never considered that thought of them being turned into an editing house for videos, series, or more. That does seem like the most possible outcome for them if they don't eventually end up closing or downsizing further.
Jeremy also said at the time that he missed Massachusetts and he and Kat had moved back home during Covid. His whole family is there, Kat's too I think.
I didn't like Mika, had nothing to do with her race or orientation- she was annoying and not funny in videos at all. Everyone outside of the main 6/7 they tried to put into videos were complete flops.
She had that whole rant on Off Topic that was cringey as fuck. She just cried victim and claimed that rural Texans were all racist and homophobic by saying she was afraid to travel out there or too small towns. Definitely a spoiled LA child
I'm glad it wasn't just me. I never disliked her for being a woman or because of her race. I didn't like her personality, she just wasn't funny and it felt like she was forcing herself to be there. Then when I was watching one of the podcasts she was on (the one with the bar on set), I immediately started to dislike her as she complained about the fans and how hard she has things when she's a celebrity's daughter and grew into a lot of money (from what I could tell). It just screamed to me that she hated her job at RT and wanted out, and outrage from fans gave that to her.
@@taylorcrawford4387 yep exactly this, she'd halt a joke with shouting then everyone would go quiet and wait for her, she'd have a go at making a joke then everyone would have to move onto another topic
when she went off when trump won and she said that now she could be r*ped in the streets cause of him and the others on that allways open being just as bad killed all of them for me. im not a trump fan but that allways open was the worse thing i have ever watched.
One thing that i remember being mentioned when it turned out Joel no longer worked at RT, was that it was around the time that guy broke into Gavin and Megs house with a gun and ended up getting shot by police and i remember Joel made some pretty crappy tweet about it, i forget exactly what it was he said, but it was at best a bit dickish and insensitive given what had just happened.
For me Achievement Hunter died because the good talent with good dynamics all left for one reason or another, and the ever changing new 'teams' didn't bounce off each other like the early teams did. I feel like after the Ryan situation they just never recovered, in both talent and probably just morale. Funhaus died for me when Bruce/Lawrence left. The dynamic of that group just collapsed from those two losses and never recovered. Rooster Teeth should be a case study on why good HR departments are a necessity lol. HR, or whoever was in control of HR, killed that company.
yeah for me they never had any team like when they were making their minecraft lets plays. Michael, gavin, ray, geoff and jack, excluding that pig ryan were just top tier in content. After them, i never saw any team that i vibed with or felt was anything like the old AH
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XTdude you obviously liked Ryan you can admit you did and found him funny and admit he was a sleazball that deserves everything coming to him. Why are you someone that never met him acting like you psychically knew the true evil he was than the people around him just laughable just be honest😂
Roosterteeth has always been left leaning and millennial. For christ sakes, they were based in Austin! For me, the major thing that brought down their downfall was corporate and the scandals. Corporate killed the creativity, Scandals exposed that roosterteeth were not just quirky nerds having a good time.
Thet went from a center-left group of friends that were willing to be edgy to a corporate husk. They muzzled themselves and lost what made them special. A political shift to radically leftward was part of that.
Yeah but they lean left more than average they're the typical Internet leftist. So the scandals are surprising them going corpo isn't surprising either . Disgusting loud leftist cucking for corporations go hand in hand
It wasn't that it was left leaning, it was that they all tried to change the content based on the lefts puritan views on comedy, where you're not allowed to punch down or offend. They unilaterally decided we all moved on from edgy comedy and if we don't like it don't watch and so we didn't. Turns out when you cater your content to the whims of a few crybabies on Twitter you lose everything that made you popular in the first place.
The Vic situation was fully bullshit. There is no one to come forward with claims that was directly involved , it was third party claims except a pair of twins eventually wrote an affidavit about a situation but they have their own reputation of lying about encounters in the community and we're not in any of the first claims to come out. All pictures in that article you showed the actual person came forward to say none of that was true and someone made up a story using their photos that they blurred.
the firing of Joel was the big turning point for me. it really set the tone that company only cared for one side of the coin, and refused to accept anything but. like sure there police brutality can be a real thing, but that didn't give a reason for people to destroy random stores and businesses own by the people in the community. and joel telling store owners to defend their property is not "pretty problematic".
Joel telling Gavin he hopes someone breaks into his house so he can see the value in guns? Joel saying that he never thought he’d root for the cancer of a politician to win but here we are? It was a lot more than that bro
Hello! As a former employee at Rooster Teeth (laid off around 2019) I can from first hand experience explain somethings behind the scenes. 1) The company from the start of 2017 as been losing revenue and continued these losses into 2024 leading to the closure 2) I helped worked on shows such as RWBY where creatives differences were not only common, they happened daily. Reason I mention this is simply because the show is/was suppose to end a 2 to 3 years ago. Also the turnover rate at RT was really bad. 3) Alot of drama in the office. Like alot alot. Like highschool drama level. 4) Burnout was a huge thing, even people that have stayed for the company for years was an issue. No work was getting done. 5) The Pay was not worth certain positions where other places were better. 6) The workplace for me was not really toxic, it was depressing. From my point if view. 7) Vic was so AWESOME! Can't express this enough man he was so cool with everyone. Everybody loved him. Even after the allegations everybody supported him anonymously. I know alot of this might be known but kinda wanted to just comment of this. The video was really well done and loved it!
No wonder the only good quality thing from RWBY after season 3 is Watt's rant to Cinder. It felt like a genuine plea from one writer to the others to improve their own work. It feels more full of emotion than anything else.
@@The_Nocturnal_Raven The writing in fact was rushed. Sessions where everyone comes together wasn’t really dedicated to the writing and characters. So many times that scripts, and animation were changed that I bet all the money in my pocket it was changed over 150 times per season. But yeah RWBY as a franchise sucks unfortunately. That’s why I will never support it and its future ( I’ve helped with the series since season 2).
@@Alcklefin It's a shame, cause RWBY had real potential. I always viewed it as a positive/anime-esque Bloodborne, which is my favorite game of all time. It had real promise... and it felt like it was going to be a serious show. Then Monty died. Nothing against you who worked on it, it just didn't feel the same afterwards. You guys really did the best with what you were given. : /
@@The_Nocturnal_Raven When Monty died the atmosphere changed 100%. Your right it wasent the same and it won’t ever be the same. Most of the original team left. Only me and 10 others stayed because we thought our voices would be heard and continue on Monty”s vision.
@@Alcklefin I salute you for trying! Were you only involved in RWBY, or did you also work on anything else, like RvB? It's not often I get to ask people who literally worked on stuff in my childhood questions like this. : )
Ironically Micah was probably right to hold back, Bernie made a mistake by pushing her to talk politics and social issues. IMO i'm sure there was some real bigotry but the vast majority of her negative image wasn't because she was black and bi, but because she wouldn't stop talking about it once she was a regular in front of the camera. Their product was entertainment; and people, all people, want escapism in their media not constant reminders of how shit their lives are. You can do that by showing someone's amazing life or someone's even shittier life. She was never going to sell that latter image given her family situation. TL;DR You can sell your politics but when, where, and how are very important factors.
Wasnt there like a long period of time prior to the allegations going public over which a lot of people had been talking online on forums about having uncomfortable experiences with him?
Rooster teeth god spoiled by over saturation after they had like 7 channels I was like yea this is just a content farm and the quality is no longer a concern.
@@Taco117. forreal. Once they announced ray was leaving and they made that minecraft lp with him leaving at the very end is basically the day i started to taper off from them
The biggest warning signs for me that made me step back was being bought out and becoming corporate followed up then fully engaging in social political viewpoints that were contradictory to a lot of what early Rooster Teeth was. The writing was on the wall and instead of listening to fan concerns they doubled down and told people to not watch anymore (which is always a death nail).
Joel Hayman posted his personal beliefs on a website intended to publish your personal beliefs for discussion and got fired. That is the problem with RT.
The problem it felt like was you have to” toe the line or your out “ . Joel was let go for speaking his political views but Jack could wax poetly about his and nothing was done. Uno the movie showed that
An unfortunate reality about how things go wrong when friends go corporate, HR doesn't do their job, people get too much money/attention, and the company loses touch with the fans by shoving bad politics and bad content down their throat.
Before the Haywood incident, I myself was getting sick of all the politics in their videos. I was sick of hearing it in my daily life and when my favorite youtubers at the time really started to sour their content for me
Scandals aside, I personally felt the end was coming back in 2019. As an Australian fan of the company, we had the announcement that RT was cancelling their Sydney RTX conventions, we also had our RT merchandise branch (Hanabee) cut ties and remove all of their merch from the online store. This is when I cancelled my FIRST membership I had held since 2010. RT practically cut off an entire continent of their fan base. Also in 2019 was the massive lay-off of staffers from the RT workforce in Sept 2019, which was definitely a knock on effect of the Gray Haddock Incident as well as WarnerMedia making significant cuts during their shake up of their divisions. I believe that was when Bruce and Lawrence opted for voluntary redundancy, seeing as people were already losing their jobs they just decided to leave the sinking ship. And I think that was the smart move, because every single scandal since 2019 has just shook the company to the core. Covid-19 hit, they all went to working from home and none of the issues were ever dealt with until they started becoming public. It showed the fans they wouldn't fix any of their internal problems and that HR was useless. The real kicker for me was in November 2022 when they released almost all of their Animation department staff from full time positions and didn't renew those who were on contracts. They gutted that entire department after they finished work on 2 feature films and RWBY Volume 9. I saw no future in the company from that point on. After learning that AH shut down as well as the main RTX not happening this year, it's writing on the wall that RT is financially struggling like never before.
Lessons that can be learned: -On company trips, everyone leaves together. -HR must listen when allegations happen. -Don't hire for diversity, hire for compatibility with your current team. -Value the talent you have on your team. -Listen to what your audience wants.
Just gonna say right now there are better sources of news for the Vic Mignogna situation. Anime News Network was shown to be untrustworthy and biased. The photos on the article were taken from the girls social medias and a fake story was written with them. The Vic drama was the downfall for me. Since they are just allegations with no backing or real evidence (most being hearsay he said she said type of evidence from 12+ years ago). The timing just feels odd like a targeted attack to remove someone they didn’t like, these allegations came out right when the dragon ball super broly movie was coming out and Vic was the big name on it. Felt like rooster teeth was more focused on money and making collaborations with Funimation (an anime dubbing company) than doing the right thing and investigating. They already had funimation voice actors in RWBY so it feels like they bent the knee to appease the funimation voice actors who didn’t like Vic
And the jokes on them now because Funimation is also shutting down (thank fuck honestly.) And Vic is making his own dubbing company which makes me happy for him.
Rooster Teeth's treatment of Sheena Oum and Shane Newville and their subsequent dropping of Vic on allegations, most of which were later either debunked or retracted, turned me off to RT completely and I never looked back. That and RWBY just turned into a dumpster fire and I didn't bother watching past Volume 5. I would never wish calamity on RT, but it wouldn't concern me remotely if calamity befell RT. Edit: Gotta say, Oobleck's voice actor getting heat for comparing the Trump movement to the Nixon movement is the definition of, "Why are you booing me? I'm right."
Because the pinnacle was Ryan Geoff Jack Ray Michael and Gavin. The chemistry between them all made the lets plays what they were. Anybody who joined later just weren't the same.
Ray leaving was the first blow in my eyes. AH never felt the same, they tried an endless rotation of different members to fill his spot but they couldn’t
I felt Jeremy had his moments as someone who could replace Ray’s role but after all the unnecessary additions and scandals the content definitely fell off for me.
You forgot 2016 where they were telling people to stop watching them if they don't agree with them politically... Never tell people to stop watching your content. Also didn't help that Mica was a racist.
@@honeynutqueerio They would insult people who was going to vote for Trump and told them not to watch on pretty much every podcast. And for Mica she told a story about going to a gas station in Texas where there were four white guys standing by their truck and she was scared of them. It also broke my heart to find out her dad Mr. Reading Rainbow himself was a racist too.
@@honeynutqueerio No but white people are. I never said the 4 white guys were Trump supporters... She only said they were white. When she left RT she said almost everyone was racist there.
@@Donbett1974 i’m not sure i understand, being afraid of a group of white men doesn’t constitute racism. she has no reason to lie about her work conditions when her stories corroborate with everyone else, even if it hurts to hear a little.
I sent an email to the customer support phone thingy for Rook after the second wave of allegations, the audio logs in the book became obsolete so I wanted to figure out how to access them. Was told that the podcasts from the channel would be back up at the end of 2022, and well here we are.
From what I remember reading Jeremy left in large part because during COVID he moved back to his home city, started streaming full time, and realized how much better he liked that than being part of AH so quit to stream full time.
Jeremy has actually explained on a couple of streams why he left AH. There was a stream where he made a joke (I didn't see that stream and never heard the joke) and a lot of people gave him shit for it. Jeremy deals with mental health a lot so after that he told Trevor that he wanted to quit. Edit: Looking it up and it wasn't a stream it was s Golf It video. Apparently the joke was him making fun of how India treats cows as sacred animals. Just gonna throw some bias but come the fuck on, that was tame and people have made way worse jokes. Some people are just so thin skinned.
Thanks for making this and bringing everything into one place, more or less. I do wanna say that F**kface, FaceJam, and to a lesser extent Clutch My Pearls are all great podcasts/content for long time RT and AH fans, as well as new fans. If the rest of it were to go away, I'd be happy with what once was and would hope to see more from those that still make quality stuff. And, naturally, gotta give mad props to you for making solid, consistent, and non-biased content following this kind of news for fans, former or current.
I listened to the RT Podcast for 7 years to hear Burnie, Gus, Gavin, Barbara, Kerry, Miles, Jack, Joel, Blaine and everyone else from that era talk about stuff and make me laugh. When Blizz, Mika and Kayla started doing the podcast, it was awful and had a huge left wing agenda. I unsubscribed. I miss the old days, but I am glad that the abomination it became is now dead.
Lawdog said on a stream (2 or 3 years ago) that AC would go to the public restroom, loudly JO, slick it into his hair, and then try to shake Lawdog's hand afterwards and would use unrelenting creepy encouragements to try to get him to shake his disgusting hand. That's why he left so abruptly
@@Gemmycobson He said it while getting ready to stream a game, the boring beginning part where he was like, setting up in his living room and answering questions, way back in '22
Jeremy has talked about his reasoning for leaving. He moved back home during covid, when they were all online, to be closer to family. When the company started going back to the office, he didn't want to relocate back the Texas. He may have known more than he has said, but that is the reason he gave.
allanah left way earlier then that. i stopped watching everything RT around april of 2020 and she was alread ygone from funhaus by then. am i not remembering that correctly?
Roosterteeth essentially killed themselves. Too many scandals, notable cast members leaving, and several channels ending themselves (Cowchop, Sugar Pine 7, Achievement Hunter). Viewers are not to blame here, some channels like funhaus became shells of their former selves. If Roosterteeth was profitable, Warner Bros. wouldn’t have shut them down.
When Rooster and AH started doing what they did.... it was new and fresh and no one was doing it. It does seem like the aquisition by Warner Brothers really was the turning point. It went from just a bunch of friends gaming in a single room, to a big production with forced dialog, and pre-planned bits. I also feel the rise of Twitch really did them in. Matt Bragg getting laid off with last straw for myself. I loved his dry humor. Everyone else was just to over the top.
Matt's really found a home gaming with Ray, Naggz, and Chibi that's for sure. Half his jokes don't get noticed but if you hear them you have to chuckle.
I think the turning point happened well before them being bought by WB. I'd argue and say the turning point was in 2014 when ray left and then ryan had his scandal. After that things really started changing and the writing was on the wall
As a teen, I used to be obsessed with RT. It makes me so sad that these things happened, and some of these people who were involved with the company had such scandals. I used to dream about working at RT, but that dream faded out several years ago.
The day Ray left was the day i stopped watching. I only got into roosterteeth through achievement hunter and primarily the minecraft series because i was a child at the time and man did i love rooting for him to win the tower every episode. When he left and Jeremy joined i lost all interest in them
yeah, i was like a year and a half into my stint in the air force when i found them in like 2011-2012 and that was when i was loving their content. Once ray left it definitely felt like the glue that was holding them together had left. I loved michael gavin and geoff bantering but without ray it just didn't feel the same. Those 4 imo were the best but i also started to taper off once ray left and then the ryan incident only made it worse and once geoff stepped back i basically stopped watching them altogether because there was nothing left for them at that point
Achievement Hunter arrived in my recommended feed once on a train journey to uni. They became my biggest comfort in the years to come and I slowly became introduced to RoosterTeeth as a whole. They were one of the first large RUclips companies I was interested in and I was a devoted fan for several years. After Ray left I found myself drifting; Other people were making content i vibed more with and slowly I stopped watching. I noticed occasionally that their sub count had stagnated and didn’t find myself surprised. Something had changed, and not just because Ray had left. Becoming part of a big company felt alien to what I knew as a group of friends working on a passion project. I am sad but not surprised that it’s ended this way. There were red flags for a long time and when I heard Bernie was gone I knew they were done. Not because he was the be all and end all but because I knew he wouldn’t go unless he was getting out for a reason.
Joel didn't help himself. He became increasingly neurotic and painted a target on his back. I don't like what happened to him either, but he should have known a little better. However, I have no doubt the company became increasingly hostile to their more right-leaning members.
UPDATE: As of today, the 6th of March 2024, Rooster Teeth has announced that they will shut down after 21 years of operation: variety.com/2024/digital/news/rooster-teeth-shutting-down-warner-bros-discovery-1235931953/
ABSOLUTE INSANITY!
Thank you for the video and the explanation. I wasn't up to speed on the RT situation. I thought your video was quite objective but thorough.
Massive W
What about the last season of RvB, is it still in development or is it just abruptly Cancelled?..
So you're a time traveler! 😂
I saw a comment on another video saying that the loss of Rooster Teeth is "Like losing a loved one to dementia , its certainly sad but it was inevitable and they werent themselves by the end so you feel like you lost them a long time ago"
That's the most accurate statement about this. Most of the nostalgia and good feelings are from their first 10 years.
Yep. Discovered them in 2005 when a roommate bought RvB DVD's. Kept up with the AH/LP channels til 2014 or so, lost a lot of interest after Ray left.
@@Fadaar I have the RvB dvds up to a certain point, I'll likely wind up getting them all but the golden years are ages ago. Hoping that people have start archiving a bunch of the Achievement Hunter videos just in case, given that the website is going offline in less than a month (May 15th)
I can't think of a better analogy than this, nailed it. After Burny and Matt sold RT and it was no longer in their hands it was only a matter of time. Still, I can't believe Warner Bros. ended up with RT and fast tracked the downfall.
I used to watched them back in the 56k era and it used to take 2-3 hours just download a 3-5 mins episodes of RvB!
To me, they just became too coperate especially when they moved to a third and larger building to accomendate the many new staffs they had hired! I lost interest in the group as a whole somewhere with RWBY season 9 but I certain was was sooner than that!
If you are ever feeling useless, remember that Rooster Teeth has an HR department.
Best comment.
That’s funny
This isn't a good analogy.
A common misconception is that HR departments are there to protect workers, it's not. It's there to protect the company from liability in what happens with the workers.
If Rooster Teeth was never in legal trouble because of how HR handled things, HR worked as intended.
@@Zirp-what zirp said. HR is there to protect the image and reputation of the company not the employees. If you’ve ever lost a job in an unfair way or dealt with discrimination in the workplace you will find this out.
@@Zirp- is this how bleak it is in america? im from nz and when i was harassed at work the person was immediately fired - it was a company probably the same size as RT. surely part of HR's job is to stop the disgruntled employee from seeking legal action or slamming the company's rep? shouldn't that incentivise them to fix shit?
I don't remember exactly why, but I do remember thinking back then that, when Burnie Burns left Rooster Teeth, it felt less like a fond farewell and more like he was getting outta dodge...
I honestly felt like Brunie was trying to maintain a positive work environment and be that guy. But he was either constantly was fazed out of discussions or straight up outvoted.
He saw the writing on the wall and said “I am getting out while I can still work in Media if I even want to.”
Completely agree. Burnie is the man and left at the perfect time. I will give him the most credit for their success over the years and the least blame for the downfall. Plus he was amazing on podcast and shorts
@@reedtheroom9580 Yeah, the podcast definitely just wasn't the same without him.
He 100% knew what was coming and ran. Good on him.
well everyone said he sold the company and then moved to antarctica. Turns out it was actually scotland
When a company goes from friends goofing around and making cool stuff to corporate greed and pushing out stuff you’re not passionate about you’re going to lose your fans
Yup
Feel like that’s what is happening to Bungie right now too…
@@umbridly_doodly_oodly4 it is what’s happening to Bungie. Ever noticed their slogan changed?
Well then don’t sell out.
I'd argue that when your company of friends habitually treats newer employees like dirt, and refuses to learn how to be better managers and leaders, the rot is deep rooted long before the corporate buyout. Doesn't help when those fans defend old guard bullshit long after it's clear the things they loved aren't worth ruining lives.
The reason i watched rooster teeth was because it was just a couple of friends playing scuffed video games together and doing creative challenges. Not only that, they were actually doing achievement videos. It all went downhill with Ray leaving and turning it into a corporation. After a while, Ray confirmed he was tired of doing Minecraft videos after the 50th episode. I think that was the start. All they cared about was numbers.
3:51 - Honestly though for me, as someone who was a HUGE Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter fan at the time, Ray leaving is a very important point. I feel like this was also around the time the quantity of their content kept increasing but the quality of their content kept decreasing.
Personally, I started losing my interest in AH 1-2 years after Ray left. Still an important point of course
yea jeremy saved AH but when others started to back off and others came in is when it started to go down. jeremys dunce cap on jacks statue in minecraft was a great moment.
100% with you on that timeline@@fredfondler7281 I got a little bit back into it a few years later because of a friend but it did not last very long
This may be because I came in late however I felt that the quality of AH videos was still pretty great even after Ray left. People had a lot of issues with Trevor and Alfredo but I usually think that was just by preference, they were still people having fun. I think the quality actually started going down at ~2018-19, which was when RT was pushing for more live-action shows and you could see people were being stretched thin. They'd suddenly had to split the team and you'd have one fly off across the country while the others worked overtime to create videos and back and forth.
I kept watching till the end, but I think it was partly out of nostalgia because I had known these guys my whole life.
HR in the US only exists to protect the company not the employees. What's interesting is that they don't even do that task very well.
If you ever go to HR get it documented so when you get a lawyer; YES you should get a lawyer, they can't say "well we didn't know we were infringing on their rights, they never told us"
HR is there to enforce SJW nonsense.
This guy gets it. All HR employees should be fired and get jobs in fast food where they'll be somewhat useful.
Just going to give an honorable mention for 3 more big things that happened
1. Gray Haddock embezzled money from the company to support his own creative project while others were left trying to figure out what happened until after he left
2. Rooster Tooth losing its credibility as an employer in hiring sites like glassdoor. To quote/paraphrase one of the actual HR people an ex-employee reported "we're rooster teeth, people would pay **us** money to work here." followed by people getting laid off, fired, or quitting in large numbers on account of how the company and people in it worked.
3. Them losing their Studio office and moving into their new area, the basement level of an office building, which is simultaneously a huge downsize compared to before and has almost all of its employees next to each other and the set/animation capture room sharing the same space
Isn't Haddock the guy responsible for the gundam ripoff not done well Gen:lock?
@@Castitalusyes that is the project he funneled money towards.
@@DivusMagus I mean he was the head of their animation project, I'd imagine that's his job. I think people are conflating it being bad to him stealing money but it was just really bad.
@@Cheezus i dont know about stealing but i do remember they said he spent the amount of money for 2 seasons in one and that was why he was fired. was that a cover? i dont know but they did say he lost them money.
When did they lose their studio? I’m assuming this was the massive hanger/warehouse they used to work out of
And now we reach today. Where Rooster Teeth was officially shut down by Warner Bros.
I shed no tears for them. The company they were died over 10 years ago.
Good. They said they didnt wanna go into politics but went into politics
@@vincentkrych2158woke goes broke 🤷♀️
@@stonecoldsteverharvey7862 Yep 💯 agreed. How they treated Joel on his comments about 2020 having a different opinion, and fired him for that while RT turned into far left woke company. I Really dont feel too bad about this shut down!
I do miss the 2011-2015 Golden Days
@@stonecoldsteverharvey7862 Exactly. Look at all those "woke" companies out there which are so broke. Like, ya know, Disney. So broke. Stop with this nonsense. Be more like a dog.
As more of a prominent Inside Gaming and Funhous fan, losing Bruce and Adam was the final nail in the coffin for me
I stopped watching immediately after Bruce left
Once Bruce, Adam, and Lawrence left I stopped watching.
I did watch it for awhile after and I agree with u James and Elyse are great…That’s about it, just going to watch Neebs Gaming instead 👍
I mean Red State Ryan is one of the bright spots on the channel as well as James and Elyse but I'm not really getting warm with the other cast. Sure they're talented and doing good work but it's not my style of humor anymore.
Inside Games (Bruce and Lawrence‘s new channel)
It doesn't shock me to learn AH has been shut down. As a long-time fan, I went back after the Ryan situation to support AH after drifting away. The content was unrecognizable, though. It was Michael and Jack surrounded by a cast of milquetoast strangers still playing GTA V. It didn't even feel like they cursed as much. I remembered quickly why I left.
Downfall started after Ray leaving tbh. And now he’s making bank. AH still had a legendary run though sad to see times changed
I just remember watching one of their TTT videos and suddenly realising "wait, none of the people are started watching this channel for are in this video", went through the recent uploads and it was the same story so i left. I watched AH for the absolute chaos of their lets plays, then all of a sudden i feel like I'm almost watching a kids tv show with how watered down it was
The Let's Play channel is back in the hands of Geoff and Gavin again. I've been enjoying the new videos.
@@bucky13is it independent from Roosterteeth? So all of the Lets Play videos will stay up?
@@mattt525 It is part of RT unfortunately. No idea what will happen at this point. I'm hoping they go independent and start Patreon or something so they can keep making videos without worrying about corporate overlords.
I remeber og roosterteeth where geoff would bragg about pulling his pants down and showing his junk to gavin at random times during work and other such antics. Stuff like that doesnt survive roosterteeth becoming corporatized but also explains the atmosphere that caused all the drama later on when people dont adapt to it.
It's fine when it's close friends but as soon as you start hiring people that you don't know and may or may not share your sense of humor you either need to respect that or fire somebody for not wanting to see your ballsack 🤷♂️
@ItsGamingFancy As an employee it's the least you can do for your boss
It was just Geoff's way of asking the employees if they were feeling nuts that day.
yea RT never left that apartment where they started RvB. they just never grew up and that was their downfall.
Yeah. That kinda stuff can fly when ur all friends who gets each other’s jokes and sense of humor. But when u start hiring outsiders who aren’t used to that, that kinda stops becoming a tolerable thing. The OG members never grew out of their college antics, which u can’t not do if ur gonna go full corporate.
Well as of about an hour or so ago they are shut down. Rest in peace to a huge part of my childhood, Watching The Six Original Achievement Hunters play cops and Crooks gave me so many happy memories as a kid, the achievement hunter vibe, at least in their first office, was my dream job.
HR had the biggest role in RT self destructing
you mean H&R
12:56 he at least says HR here but continues to say “H&R” when he’s personally referring to it instead of directly referencing someone saying it lol
HR in general is fucking useless
Not saying it's the case in RT, but HR is generally useless, and this is coming from someone who's wife is a director of HR (and hates her life). She says it herself. She's just a "middle-man" who can only do what ownership tells her to do. Even when she goes outside of their guidance to do anything pro-employee, they immediately attack her and blame her and tell her not to do anything else. It's crazy. It's the executives that are mostly to blame...
@@iceman333933 it's in the name the human resource department, we are just a resource to be exploited. We also work for the same people, so why would people think they are on the worker's side?
It's still so funny that when they were acquired by full-screen and people complained that it would change RT and they were selling out, that they said "Full-screen will only help make our content better". Yeah, they had a couple higher budget projects because of the purchase. But then Full-screen QUICKLY realized they weren't getting the profits they wanted and started demanding more output. So RT and Achievement Hunter started pumping out more (but less enthusiastic) content. Then when that wasn't enough, Fullscreen sold them to Sprint or whatever. They TOO realized it wasn't enough profit for multinational companies and demanded they fire half their employees and even THAT wasn't enough so they sold to WB. Who of course inherited all the scandals and the lackluster mass produced passionless content and now we're here 😅
Selling the company was the worst idea they could have had. I mean they'd probably still be in the crapper but they'd have not had to go nuts making projects to appease a big corp.
None of those companies micro-managed their hiring practices. RT kept hiring worse people and it led to this outcome.
I get it's easy to blame these bigger companies but at the end of the day NONE of these people will put any blame on themselves and who they hired because they've either drank the Kool-Aid or don't want to be ostracized by one of the most unwelcoming, unfriendly environments to exist. Nothing is as toxic as the ideologues in Austin, who berate anyone who will not agree on 100% of their ideas and opinions at every given moment.
I stopped watching completely a year or two after they sold because the company lost what made rooster teeth, they started making way too many shows and adding way too many talents I didn't know nor care about. My favorite thing used to be the RT podcast but then they started making 45 other podcast and it diluted everything.
@@matx6666This is true. Off Topic was probably the Second best podcast next to the RT Podcast, but once they started bringing in an entire cast of people I never heard of nor cared about, it just did not seem entertaining to watch anymore.
I watched Funhaus at its peaktime ten years ago. „Demodisk“ was the best, especially the chemistry of James Willems, Bruce Greene and Adam Kovic was top notch humour. Sad that it didn’t last.
Those three really the top gear of gaming
The part that makes me incredibly sad is how Bruce basically sold out
Don't forget Spoole and his cheap game picks.
@@wesrrowlands8309 yeah that was awesome.
He was amazing in a group, but his livestreams are so unwatchable. 90% "THANKS SOANDSO FOR THE SUB WOO BITS HEY DONT FORGET THAT HYPE TRAIN DOOT DOOT" @@xXRangersDestinyXx
I think after Burnie left, you could see things were starting to fall apart. He definitely saw the writing on the wall and left at the opportune moment to start a new life in Scotland. Then after the Adam/Ryan situation broke, that shattered what remained of anything positive about RT/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus. It was never the same again. I'm genuinely sad that RT is shutting down. I'd been a fan since 2009. RvB was one of the first things I'd really got into and back then they seemed unstoppable. I genuinely hope that all those who got laid off end up finding other work and finding success elsewhere.
Bernie left for Scotland before he got exposed as advocating the pedophile atmosphere of Ryan and the bashing of the fans. He didn't get out at the "opportune time" he ran like a bitch lol
Burnie didn't see any writing on the wall, he and Matt specifically caused the company to start sinking and took off before anyone else caught on, Joel has said he was aware they were leaving well before they did but he couldn't say anything after getting fired due to an NDA. They jumped ship and left Geoff to fend for himself with his hands tied and his only support alienated
Also, I hate Adam being lumped in with Ryan. There's a gigantic difference morally and legally between what they both did.
Adam had to be let go because it happened at work, but other than that, it's not really a bad thing.
The Ryan thing is pretty bad overall.
It was a company of Theseus, everybody was slowly replaced until it was basically a different entity.
I mean I think everyone was long gone except Matt by the time they closed down.
That's the point. Literally everyone was replaced, resulting in a completely different identity for the company.
Well, I suppose it answers the thought experiment.
All this went down like Gavin's hatred of soggy bread. Sad to see such a great team end like this
When Ray left in 2014. He was like the soul of achievement hunter. Like content of achievement hunter wasn't as good anymore. Ray had the same feelings as everyone else. Everyone was burnt out, he was the one who just left and everyone stayed. Being burnt out and not taking care of workers and "crunching". It has many effects. Ray got out when the building was starting to burn.
agreed. I loved the crew of michael, gavin, geoff, ray and jack, excluding the last member for his scandal but that crew was where it was at and after ray left it really did feel like a huge part of what made those videos enjoyable had left with him. I did stay because i loved michael, gavin and geoffs banter just as much but then geoff started to step back and then i knew it wasn't gonna be the same anymore and stopped watching them
F**k face is the last bastion of old rooster teeth. Geoff, gav, and Andrew are arguably carrying this entire company.
Yeah, Geoff and Gavin are awesome.
@@danielmaster8776Geoff is woke
We obviously don't know all the reasons, but Jeremy HAS said that he became a part time employee because he wanted to stay near family after they moved back home out of state during the pandemic
I loved Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter. I grew up with them since the dawn of RUclips in 2008. As I got older, I felt the magic would never end. Little by little I felt as if the company turned its back on me. It's sad because to this day I still watch old content and smile with a tear in my eye, seeing who I used to call Rockstars become a former shadow of themselves.
Didn't the chick that took the pick with Vic actually defend him? And all this was an excuse to fire him because other VA also didn't want him around.
Yes and this is a reminder that Monica Rial is a bitch along with the rest of the major DBZ cast. Also how Sean Schimel still gets voice acting roles even after it's known publicly how much of a terrible person he is, is incredibly beyond me.
The reason why he was fired from RT and Funimation was because an internal investigation was performed when other voice actors filed complaints against his behavior towards them and then his previous behavior towards fans started to bubble to the surface. There's apparently a giant forum thread that was started almost two decades ago tracking Vic's life and behavior. Mostly just people talking about how creeped out they were because of their interactions with him.
The situation was used to drop Vic but he had a notorious rep already for being a gross creep with fans (hosting "private bible study" at conventions with ONLY female fans is a bad look to start)
The allegations against Vic were mostly made up and the ones that weren't were exaggerated to make Vic look bad. The worst Vic was guilty of was cheating on his woman, which was neither Funimation nor Rooster Teeth's business and therefore not a fireable offense.
@Worm-revolver It was proven the so called "internal investigation" was anything, but an investigation as the woman who conducted it didn't really do anything.
Plus, the other VAs like Monica Rial, Jamie Marchie, Sean Schemmel, Chris Sabat nd such all hated him yet they all pretended like he was family.
Hell, Monica Rial said Vic assaulted her a decade ago and then kept being his so call friend.
Meanwhile, Sean Schemmel and Chris Sabat were doing worse and they still got the armor because Sabat owns his own dub studio and even some female VAs said he hold casting couches.
Yet noone says anything about them.
Early days it felt like I was hanging out with mates when I listened/watched, then it just got further and further away from that concept. Absolutely terrible from about 2016 onward.
This is 100 percent it
2016? Did Trump play a role?
@@TheFingledorf Yeah, he broke a lot of people's brains, you can see it in one of the RT podcasts where Gus openly says they're ditching the no politics rule for conversations, that's basically when I stopped watching it because I watched for stupid stories, not to hear a bunch of americans act like a politician they don't like is gonna bring about the end times.
You nailed it, many people couldn't keep their stupid opinions to themselves during that time and RT fully embraced the political word-vomit, alienating many fans. I'd dropped out around 2014 but heard nothing good about them after that.
I was a huge fan of achievement hunter back in 2013 and watched almost every vid. I got excited to come home from work every Friday to watch the next Minecraft let’s play and grew to love Ray. He became my favourite, he was so funny and made the videos worth watching. When he left I slowly stopped watching until i stopped all together as it wasn’t that great anymore. Gavin had his moments but it wasn’t the same. When I saw the whole Ryan situation I thought it was a joke. It’s when I found this channel and loved the content of news you bring. Keep up the good work
Literally the same. I remember watching their GTA and Minecraft lets plays and they were so good. Loved it. After Ray left I also quit watching. It seems he made a good choice leaving cause he seems to be doing well on twitch. I might have to rewatch those playthroughs sometime.
@@sexybeast104 yeah man. I need to do that too. Some of those old vids are amazing and still funny. I follow him on RUclips and watch a lot of his vids. Especially the resident evil and lethal company vids. The group he has in there is perfect, brings back old AH memories.
@@moz2552 Ray has a video of him watching around 10 years of content from his time at RT and his streams. He also tells some stories of his time there as well.
@@adaml83 yeah I saw that a while ago. So funny. So many good memories.
same. That's basically how it went for me as well
The more and more time I spend at work, the more and more I realise that HR isn't there for the employees. It's there for the bosses.
The only time you should go to HR is so that you can later prove in court that you did try to address the problem with the company and they chose to ignore your rights. A lawyer will be more helpful than a HR rep
I think mentioning Geoff's sabbatical is important. There was a time where another founder of the company needed to take a step back and disconnect from the company for reasons unknown. And was a raging alcoholic at some point.
I remember I loved achievement hunter, I discovered them in 2013 and around the time Covid happened I just fell out of love and found that I wouldn’t watch their videos anymore, the fun and the humor felt like it was gone, it just felt so dead, I wish they could’ve lasted forever, but all good things must come to an end
That's about the time I found them and I'd binge old episodes and even put them on in the background as I did other stuff. I started to have issues with them when they just straight up started bullying Matt endlessly.
I miss og achievement hunter. Makes me so sad how it all ended.
I remember my first ever exposure to RT was one of the 'Geoff's Tower' episodes of LP Minecraft. I was surfing minecraft build vids at the time and randomly clicked that one...not what I was expecting and I'm not entirely sure why I stuck with it but there was something in the way these 4 or 5 guys, who were strangers to me, interacted with each other and by context you could tell they were actually doing this for a job - in an actual office...what? - and someone called 'Jack' was missing because they had a dentist appointment. I was hooked, and it was a delight finding more and more of their content, the live action stuff, and the RT podcast. What underpinned it all for me was the friendship, the small close knit community feel of the place. Once Ray left it just felt like death from a thousand cuts, every new face detracted rather than added to the experience, there came a point where I didn't recognise anyone in the videos, and didn't care enough to get to know them - it's honestly been years since I watched any content and that was basically just the Gavin and Michael stuff. Not really seen any F**kface yet but it's on my radar - Geoff's a diamond and his friendship with Gavin was possibly the best part of it all back in the day.
Happy i grow up with them but sad to see where they are.
As someone who basically grew up with Rooster teeth in the 2010's, seeing the way they went was terrible. I began to hate them for what they had become for the fans. seeing now that they are shutting down, I'm not surprised but i am sad that one of the things that got me through my toughest moments as a teenager is gone.
Right there with you
I was there when Red vs Blue was born and now I’m here… what a shame.
Same. Can still remember when the first stories in blood gulch were coming out fresh. Now it’s just…it’s sad to see how they fell from grace.
Bow-chicka-waa
I saw it born, I didn’t know I would live to see it die
Wow! I remember way back when the drama first broke I made a comment on your video and you had less than 1k subs. I am so glad to see you at over 22k! Thats ballin my dude!
That‘s a nice anecdote. Thanks for sharing and I appreciate your kind words.
I just want to add that Geoff stepping away from AH(can't remember when) definitely hurt as well.
I agree. He was my favorite personality in AH. In retrospect though, I think that decision to take a step back was best for himself at the time. The newer videos became unwatchable. And the older ones are tainted by Ryan and other controversies. So it’s hard to go and rewatch their good content to reminisce. They’re just gone.
I quit watching rooster teeth and achievement Hunter way before all of these things happened. But if I would have stuck with it, Geoff walking away would probably have been the last time I watched it
i really wanna know how you work for a company for one year and not do something about not being paid lmao
I'm guessing it was an internship
They are other ways you can get paid beside money😏
@@ItsGamingFancy even then If they promised you pay or if you were told there is no pay. Then thats on you, be an adult and stand up for yourself and stop crying about it on social media.
@@Fisteroyeah but remember later they changed their story and said hardly any pay
@Fistero This is like saying "just leave the abuse relationship" lmao.
People get stuck in jobs for all sorts of reasons. I don't see why your response is to criticize the unpaid worker and not the company that neglected to pay them or treat them fairly.
That's just bootlicking bro. If you're gonna take time out of your day to criticize someone in a youtube comment and you choose the unpaid worker who got dogged on relentlessly for years? Weird choice.
We're humans. We make irrational decisions. But hurting others is never excusable and we can't focus our attention on the irrationality of a victim.
If you can't rationalize a reason someone would work unpaid or with little pay for a year, then that means you lack empathy more than they lack sense. Perhaps you'd ought to focus on your own flaws rather than those of someone whose long since had to overcome their challenges.
Roosterteeth was my generations favourite entertainment. We watched red VS blue, rage quit, and acheivment hunter religiously. They were the Original lets players. But we grew up and the content quality dropped.
Oh man. Rage Quit. That brings back so many memories.
they aren't remotely the first let's players, I believe that accolade goes to chris chan but there were many many others before rt
The only thing that makes me sad about the end of rooster teeth is the OGs that stuck it out and tried to keep it alive for so long. I almost wish they had killed it with dignity years ago, before it got super bad.
Am I the only person who feels that Joel’s comments weren’t actually that controversial, rather, that Rooster Teeth got caught up in the polar opposite of the political spectrum, so they took his comments as much worse than they actually were?
Did Trump drive them insane with rage
Joel's comments were unprofessional and poorly timed but we saw people at the company say even worse things from the opposite end of the spectrum and meet no repercussions.
It’s funny that he was posting his opinions on his personal SM account but because his political views weren’t shared with the bosses he was fired. Mica Burton was encouraged to shared her views on the podcast by her boss and took the opportunity for the company to grift and pander to her because she was a black woman.
I stopped following roosterteeth around 2017 but which podcast was that?
The guy that said to gavin he hopes that someone breaks into his house so he can see the value in a gun?
Oh yeah that’s totally not controversial
Micah Burton becoming political on Off Topic was what drove me away, that's not why I watched their stuff. But hearing afterwards how she was treated by RT solidified me never supporting them ever again.
why did she even work there in the first place aside from nepotism? what does she have to do with gaming at all?
@@Gemmycobson nothing. That's the problem with hiring fans, especially millennials. They infest things then change them to fit their narrow minded ideals.
This randomly came across my recommends, so I'll toss in two cents:
I was all super pro RT, until Shane Newville released his open letter, which - after a bit of digging around - led to me eventually hating RT. That open letter deserves a section in this video; RT showed theirs colors well before 2020.
With regards to Mica, I've heard very credible tales, by people who were close to/worked for the Overwatch League, that she was an absolute demon. Started fires everywhere, and if she didn't like you, she'd tell everyone you were racist, sexist, etc.
Just a legitimately terrible person from what I've heard, so I highly doubt any of her accusations were credible
She was for sure hated by quite a few people. She was a nepotism hire and when the audience pointed it out, RT staff had to stick up for her. What happens with that is it creates a sense of "you're making me lie for your sake of fake righteous indignation". Whether people realize it or not, you begin to resent someone who forces you to play along with an obvious lie -- the only ones who didn't have a problem with her are either cowards or Kool-Aid drinkers.
I completely believe that people just didn't like mica because she was insufferable, and nobody wanted to listen to the spoiled brat complain about non issues. How dare anyone dissagree with her, though. After all, she is a black lesbian so she must be right about everything, which Im sure management reinforced for her.
Then, Joel being fired because he didnt cowtow to the liberal culture and political ideals. Roosterteeth became an activist organization to me, and I could no longer care about them.
Born with every silver spoon in her mouth and it has never been enough for her. She was even hanging on the coattails of Critical Role for quite some time, despite still having no personality or bringing anything interesting
She was born into a place of privilege. She's used to getting her way and uses victimhood and wealth to get anything she wants.
I'm sure she's the type of person who'd try to flaunt the suffering of her slave ancestors as if it were her own.
Racism and her set pay gaps aren’t ’non issues’ honestly it just sounds like lot just want to not like her
For me, the nail in the coffin was the Ryan situation. I was already kind of losing interest around when Fiona joined, not because of her, but because I felt like I was growing out of Achievement Hunter. When that Ryan news hit, it hit like a truck, and after that, I just couldn't bring myself to continue watching Rooster Teeth. Nothing felt the same
Stopped watching during prime achievement hunter, lets play, RT podcast days. I stopped when i left high school and went on to the army and moved on with my life, i just randomly thought of the rooster teeth gang and am just now learning about all this chaos and downfall. A part of me is happy that i stopped watching when things were peak, another part of me feels if i stuck around and engaged along with others maybe something would have gone different. Many great memories, Geoff, Jack, Michael, Burnie, Gus, Ray etc. I'll cherish some of those memories forever.
I had never considered that thought of them being turned into an editing house for videos, series, or more. That does seem like the most possible outcome for them if they don't eventually end up closing or downsizing further.
This aged like wine.
Jeremy also said at the time that he missed Massachusetts and he and Kat had moved back home during Covid. His whole family is there, Kat's too I think.
No, I don't care about the allegations.
I stopped watching Rooster teeth when the Personalities I came to see were gone.
I didn't like Mika, had nothing to do with her race or orientation- she was annoying and not funny in videos at all. Everyone outside of the main 6/7 they tried to put into videos were complete flops.
She had that whole rant on Off Topic that was cringey as fuck. She just cried victim and claimed that rural Texans were all racist and homophobic by saying she was afraid to travel out there or too small towns. Definitely a spoiled LA child
I'm glad it wasn't just me. I never disliked her for being a woman or because of her race. I didn't like her personality, she just wasn't funny and it felt like she was forcing herself to be there. Then when I was watching one of the podcasts she was on (the one with the bar on set), I immediately started to dislike her as she complained about the fans and how hard she has things when she's a celebrity's daughter and grew into a lot of money (from what I could tell). It just screamed to me that she hated her job at RT and wanted out, and outrage from fans gave that to her.
@@taylorcrawford4387 yep exactly this, she'd halt a joke with shouting then everyone would go quiet and wait for her, she'd have a go at making a joke then everyone would have to move onto another topic
spoiled rich girl who thought she was interesting
when she went off when trump won and she said that now she could be r*ped in the streets cause of him and the others on that allways open being just as bad killed all of them for me. im not a trump fan but that allways open was the worse thing i have ever watched.
One thing that i remember being mentioned when it turned out Joel no longer worked at RT, was that it was around the time that guy broke into Gavin and Megs house with a gun and ended up getting shot by police and i remember Joel made some pretty crappy tweet about it, i forget exactly what it was he said, but it was at best a bit dickish and insensitive given what had just happened.
he also once made a tweet implying he was going to buy a machine gun and bring it to work
For me Achievement Hunter died because the good talent with good dynamics all left for one reason or another, and the ever changing new 'teams' didn't bounce off each other like the early teams did. I feel like after the Ryan situation they just never recovered, in both talent and probably just morale.
Funhaus died for me when Bruce/Lawrence left. The dynamic of that group just collapsed from those two losses and never recovered.
Rooster Teeth should be a case study on why good HR departments are a necessity lol. HR, or whoever was in control of HR, killed that company.
yeah for me they never had any team like when they were making their minecraft lets plays. Michael, gavin, ray, geoff and jack, excluding that pig ryan were just top tier in content. After them, i never saw any team that i vibed with or felt was anything like the old AH
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XTdude you obviously liked Ryan you can admit you did and found him funny and admit he was a sleazball that deserves everything coming to him. Why are you someone that never met him acting like you psychically knew the true evil he was than the people around him just laughable just be honest😂
Roosterteeth has always been left leaning and millennial. For christ sakes, they were based in Austin! For me, the major thing that brought down their downfall was corporate and the scandals. Corporate killed the creativity, Scandals exposed that roosterteeth were not just quirky nerds having a good time.
Thet went from a center-left group of friends that were willing to be edgy to a corporate husk. They muzzled themselves and lost what made them special. A political shift to radically leftward was part of that.
Yeah but they lean left more than average they're the typical Internet leftist. So the scandals are surprising them going corpo isn't surprising either . Disgusting loud leftist cucking for corporations go hand in hand
Yeah but I think they were basically pro free speech leftists until around Trump
It wasn't that it was left leaning, it was that they all tried to change the content based on the lefts puritan views on comedy, where you're not allowed to punch down or offend. They unilaterally decided we all moved on from edgy comedy and if we don't like it don't watch and so we didn't. Turns out when you cater your content to the whims of a few crybabies on Twitter you lose everything that made you popular in the first place.
Aren't the 6 founders Gen X?
The Vic situation was fully bullshit. There is no one to come forward with claims that was directly involved , it was third party claims except a pair of twins eventually wrote an affidavit about a situation but they have their own reputation of lying about encounters in the community and we're not in any of the first claims to come out.
All pictures in that article you showed the actual person came forward to say none of that was true and someone made up a story using their photos that they blurred.
Exactly. His good name was ruined by a vindictive woman
I was running through the comments hoping someone talked about this. Poor dude
Y'all weirdos still haven't got over this one? 😂😂
@@robinnewhouse1563Well there are the results, Vic's studio is thriving and RT/Funimation are gone.
@@robinnewhouse1563 I mean a dude lost multiple jobs and got his reputation trashed over false accusations, I think anyone would be upset too
the firing of Joel was the big turning point for me. it really set the tone that company only cared for one side of the coin, and refused to accept anything but. like sure there police brutality can be a real thing, but that didn't give a reason for people to destroy random stores and businesses own by the people in the community. and joel telling store owners to defend their property is not "pretty problematic".
Joel telling Gavin he hopes someone breaks into his house so he can see the value in guns?
Joel saying that he never thought he’d root for the cancer of a politician to win but here we are?
It was a lot more than that bro
Hello! As a former employee at Rooster Teeth (laid off around 2019) I can from first hand experience explain somethings behind the scenes.
1) The company from the start of 2017 as been losing revenue and continued these losses into 2024 leading to the closure
2) I helped worked on shows such as RWBY where creatives differences were not only common, they happened daily. Reason I mention this is simply because the show is/was suppose to end a 2 to 3 years ago. Also the turnover rate at RT was really bad.
3) Alot of drama in the office. Like alot alot. Like highschool drama level.
4) Burnout was a huge thing, even people that have stayed for the company for years was an issue. No work was getting done.
5) The Pay was not worth certain positions where other places were better.
6) The workplace for me was not really toxic, it was depressing. From my point if view.
7) Vic was so AWESOME! Can't express this enough man he was so cool with everyone. Everybody loved him. Even after the allegations everybody supported him anonymously.
I know alot of this might be known but kinda wanted to just comment of this. The video was really well done and loved it!
No wonder the only good quality thing from RWBY after season 3 is Watt's rant to Cinder. It felt like a genuine plea from one writer to the others to improve their own work. It feels more full of emotion than anything else.
@@The_Nocturnal_Raven The writing in fact was rushed. Sessions where everyone comes together wasn’t really dedicated to the writing and characters. So many times that scripts, and animation were changed that I bet all the money in my pocket it was changed over 150 times per season. But yeah RWBY as a franchise sucks unfortunately. That’s why I will never support it and its future ( I’ve helped with the series since season 2).
@@Alcklefin It's a shame, cause RWBY had real potential. I always viewed it as a positive/anime-esque Bloodborne, which is my favorite game of all time. It had real promise... and it felt like it was going to be a serious show.
Then Monty died. Nothing against you who worked on it, it just didn't feel the same afterwards. You guys really did the best with what you were given. : /
@@The_Nocturnal_Raven When Monty died the atmosphere changed 100%. Your right it wasent the same and it won’t ever be the same. Most of the original team left. Only me and 10 others stayed because we thought our voices would be heard and continue on Monty”s vision.
@@Alcklefin I salute you for trying! Were you only involved in RWBY, or did you also work on anything else, like RvB? It's not often I get to ask people who literally worked on stuff in my childhood questions like this. : )
Ironically Micah was probably right to hold back, Bernie made a mistake by pushing her to talk politics and social issues. IMO i'm sure there was some real bigotry but the vast majority of her negative image wasn't because she was black and bi, but because she wouldn't stop talking about it once she was a regular in front of the camera. Their product was entertainment; and people, all people, want escapism in their media not constant reminders of how shit their lives are. You can do that by showing someone's amazing life or someone's even shittier life. She was never going to sell that latter image given her family situation.
TL;DR You can sell your politics but when, where, and how are very important factors.
The Vic situation is very frustrating, since a lot of it was proven false, yet he became the victim of all these lies and lost his career
The good news is he's making his own Dubbing company, double good news is that karma came for Funimation in the end.
@@persomiissleepy That's great to hear.
Wasnt there like a long period of time prior to the allegations going public over which a lot of people had been talking online on forums about having uncomfortable experiences with him?
Rooster teeth god spoiled by over saturation after they had like 7 channels I was like yea this is just a content farm and the quality is no longer a concern.
The day rooster teeth began its downfall was when the og members started stepping away from onscreen.
This ! Once Burnie left and Ray left I gave up watching RT and then Ryan thing happened so I stopped watching all together
@@Taco117. forreal. Once they announced ray was leaving and they made that minecraft lp with him leaving at the very end is basically the day i started to taper off from them
The biggest warning signs for me that made me step back was being bought out and becoming corporate followed up then fully engaging in social political viewpoints that were contradictory to a lot of what early Rooster Teeth was. The writing was on the wall and instead of listening to fan concerns they doubled down and told people to not watch anymore (which is always a death nail).
Joel Hayman posted his personal beliefs on a website intended to publish your personal beliefs for discussion and got fired. That is the problem with RT.
The problem it felt like was you have to” toe the line or your out “ . Joel was let go for speaking his political views but Jack could wax poetly about his and nothing was done. Uno the movie showed that
An unfortunate reality about how things go wrong when friends go corporate, HR doesn't do their job, people get too much money/attention, and the company loses touch with the fans by shoving bad politics and bad content down their throat.
Before the Haywood incident, I myself was getting sick of all the politics in their videos. I was sick of hearing it in my daily life and when my favorite youtubers at the time really started to sour their content for me
Jack really liked to go on rants, I still remember him whining during the uno the movie video.
@@wesrrowlands8309 Yeah, it was always annoying
And it doesn't even matter what side of the Isle your on they just made it so polarizing it was impossible to escape
@@kingming9712 Exactly
This was the exact reason I stopped watching. They torpedoed themselves.
Scandals aside, I personally felt the end was coming back in 2019. As an Australian fan of the company, we had the announcement that RT was cancelling their Sydney RTX conventions, we also had our RT merchandise branch (Hanabee) cut ties and remove all of their merch from the online store. This is when I cancelled my FIRST membership I had held since 2010. RT practically cut off an entire continent of their fan base.
Also in 2019 was the massive lay-off of staffers from the RT workforce in Sept 2019, which was definitely a knock on effect of the Gray Haddock Incident as well as WarnerMedia making significant cuts during their shake up of their divisions. I believe that was when Bruce and Lawrence opted for voluntary redundancy, seeing as people were already losing their jobs they just decided to leave the sinking ship.
And I think that was the smart move, because every single scandal since 2019 has just shook the company to the core. Covid-19 hit, they all went to working from home and none of the issues were ever dealt with until they started becoming public. It showed the fans they wouldn't fix any of their internal problems and that HR was useless.
The real kicker for me was in November 2022 when they released almost all of their Animation department staff from full time positions and didn't renew those who were on contracts. They gutted that entire department after they finished work on 2 feature films and RWBY Volume 9. I saw no future in the company from that point on. After learning that AH shut down as well as the main RTX not happening this year, it's writing on the wall that RT is financially struggling like never before.
Holy shit this comment was like a premonition. I’d look into being a psychic if I were you.
Lessons that can be learned:
-On company trips, everyone leaves together.
-HR must listen when allegations happen.
-Don't hire for diversity, hire for compatibility with your current team.
-Value the talent you have on your team.
-Listen to what your audience wants.
You really have to feel for the founders burnie, Gus, Matt and Geoff all they wanted to do was make people smile
Just gonna say right now there are better sources of news for the Vic Mignogna situation. Anime News Network was shown to be untrustworthy and biased. The photos on the article were taken from the girls social medias and a fake story was written with them.
The Vic drama was the downfall for me. Since they are just allegations with no backing or real evidence (most being hearsay he said she said type of evidence from 12+ years ago). The timing just feels odd like a targeted attack to remove someone they didn’t like, these allegations came out right when the dragon ball super broly movie was coming out and Vic was the big name on it. Felt like rooster teeth was more focused on money and making collaborations with Funimation (an anime dubbing company) than doing the right thing and investigating. They already had funimation voice actors in RWBY so it feels like they bent the knee to appease the funimation voice actors who didn’t like Vic
And the jokes on them now because Funimation is also shutting down (thank fuck honestly.) And Vic is making his own dubbing company which makes me happy for him.
Rooster Teeth's treatment of Sheena Oum and Shane Newville and their subsequent dropping of Vic on allegations, most of which were later either debunked or retracted, turned me off to RT completely and I never looked back. That and RWBY just turned into a dumpster fire and I didn't bother watching past Volume 5. I would never wish calamity on RT, but it wouldn't concern me remotely if calamity befell RT.
Edit: Gotta say, Oobleck's voice actor getting heat for comparing the Trump movement to the Nixon movement is the definition of, "Why are you booing me? I'm right."
Literally just finished watching this and went on Twitter and saw the news
Because the pinnacle was Ryan Geoff Jack Ray Michael and Gavin.
The chemistry between them all made the lets plays what they were.
Anybody who joined later just weren't the same.
As someone who still has access to the Kovic Google Drive. I can confirm. Several were taken inside the Funhaus office.
My eyes will never be the same
I don't want to sound like an a****** but doesn't really affect any of us
I miss Kovic and the Demo Disk trio 😞
The entire company has shut down now
Damn this video was such a premonition for what was to come today. Thanks for the great video
Ray leaving was the first blow in my eyes. AH never felt the same, they tried an endless rotation of different members to fill his spot but they couldn’t
I felt Jeremy had his moments as someone who could replace Ray’s role but after all the unnecessary additions and scandals the content definitely fell off for me.
agreed. Ray was definitely when i started to taper off from them and it never felt the same at all
You forgot 2016 where they were telling people to stop watching them if they don't agree with them politically... Never tell people to stop watching your content. Also didn't help that Mica was a racist.
how so?
@@honeynutqueerio They would insult people who was going to vote for Trump and told them not to watch on pretty much every podcast. And for Mica she told a story about going to a gas station in Texas where there were four white guys standing by their truck and she was scared of them. It also broke my heart to find out her dad Mr. Reading Rainbow himself was a racist too.
@@Donbett1974 me when i find out trump supporter is a race
@@honeynutqueerio No but white people are. I never said the 4 white guys were Trump supporters... She only said they were white. When she left RT she said almost everyone was racist there.
@@Donbett1974 i’m not sure i understand, being afraid of a group of white men doesn’t constitute racism. she has no reason to lie about her work conditions when her stories corroborate with everyone else, even if it hurts to hear a little.
Ray leaving was the beginning of the end. It was.
I sent an email to the customer support phone thingy for Rook after the second wave of allegations, the audio logs in the book became obsolete so I wanted to figure out how to access them. Was told that the podcasts from the channel would be back up at the end of 2022, and well here we are.
From what I remember reading Jeremy left in large part because during COVID he moved back to his home city, started streaming full time, and realized how much better he liked that than being part of AH so quit to stream full time.
Bruce and Lawrence stepped away, as good bois. Ska came before Reggae.
Jeremy has actually explained on a couple of streams why he left AH. There was a stream where he made a joke (I didn't see that stream and never heard the joke) and a lot of people gave him shit for it. Jeremy deals with mental health a lot so after that he told Trevor that he wanted to quit.
Edit: Looking it up and it wasn't a stream it was s Golf It video. Apparently the joke was him making fun of how India treats cows as sacred animals. Just gonna throw some bias but come the fuck on, that was tame and people have made way worse jokes. Some people are just so thin skinned.
I think a lot of the fans who moved in were thin skinned from the sounds of it. Jeremy's sense of humor is very much a gamer's sense of humor.
The "new fans" they imported were normies looking for a hugbox
Thanks for making this and bringing everything into one place, more or less.
I do wanna say that F**kface, FaceJam, and to a lesser extent Clutch My Pearls are all great podcasts/content for long time RT and AH fans, as well as new fans. If the rest of it were to go away, I'd be happy with what once was and would hope to see more from those that still make quality stuff.
And, naturally, gotta give mad props to you for making solid, consistent, and non-biased content following this kind of news for fans, former or current.
H&R = Tax Service
HR = Human Resources
Well during this mess Warner Brothers was being bought out by AT&T and then AT&T to sold Warner Brothers to Discovery.
I listened to the RT Podcast for 7 years to hear Burnie, Gus, Gavin, Barbara, Kerry, Miles, Jack, Joel, Blaine and everyone else from that era talk about stuff and make me laugh.
When Blizz, Mika and Kayla started doing the podcast, it was awful and had a huge left wing agenda. I unsubscribed. I miss the old days, but I am glad that the abomination it became is now dead.
Now they’re officially gone :/ rip rooster teeth
Lawdog said on a stream (2 or 3 years ago) that AC would go to the public restroom, loudly JO, slick it into his hair, and then try to shake Lawdog's hand afterwards and would use unrelenting creepy encouragements to try to get him to shake his disgusting hand. That's why he left so abruptly
lmfao whaaaat where did he say that
@@Gemmycobson He said it while getting ready to stream a game, the boring beginning part where he was like, setting up in his living room and answering questions, way back in '22
Jeremy has talked about his reasoning for leaving. He moved back home during covid, when they were all online, to be closer to family. When the company started going back to the office, he didn't want to relocate back the Texas. He may have known more than he has said, but that is the reason he gave.
It's a shame because Funhaus with Jon, Ryan, James, Elyse and Patrick are still funny as fuck.
Yeah I feel like they have been doing amazing stuff for the past year or so. I'm going to miss them...
Thank you for the break down, I had heard various stories over the years but I didn’t have a clear picture until now. Thank you😊
Glad this helped. That was the idea of the video. ;)
allanah left way earlier then that. i stopped watching everything RT around april of 2020 and she was alread ygone from funhaus by then. am i not remembering that correctly?
Yeah by then she’d moved more behind the scenes and she broke up with Blaine around that time and eventually went to Santa Monica studios.
Roosterteeth essentially killed themselves. Too many scandals, notable cast members leaving, and several channels ending themselves (Cowchop, Sugar Pine 7, Achievement Hunter). Viewers are not to blame here, some channels like funhaus became shells of their former selves. If Roosterteeth was profitable, Warner Bros. wouldn’t have shut them down.
When Rooster and AH started doing what they did.... it was new and fresh and no one was doing it. It does seem like the aquisition by Warner Brothers really was the turning point. It went from just a bunch of friends gaming in a single room, to a big production with forced dialog, and pre-planned bits.
I also feel the rise of Twitch really did them in. Matt Bragg getting laid off with last straw for myself. I loved his dry humor. Everyone else was just to over the top.
Matt's really found a home gaming with Ray, Naggz, and Chibi that's for sure. Half his jokes don't get noticed but if you hear them you have to chuckle.
I think the turning point happened well before them being bought by WB. I'd argue and say the turning point was in 2014 when ray left and then ryan had his scandal. After that things really started changing and the writing was on the wall
As a teen, I used to be obsessed with RT. It makes me so sad that these things happened, and some of these people who were involved with the company had such scandals. I used to dream about working at RT, but that dream faded out several years ago.
The day Ray left was the day i stopped watching. I only got into roosterteeth through achievement hunter and primarily the minecraft series because i was a child at the time and man did i love rooting for him to win the tower every episode. When he left and Jeremy joined i lost all interest in them
At least he got off the ride early and is still thriving.
@@seki108 he got off at the right time
yeah, i was like a year and a half into my stint in the air force when i found them in like 2011-2012 and that was when i was loving their content. Once ray left it definitely felt like the glue that was holding them together had left. I loved michael gavin and geoff bantering but without ray it just didn't feel the same. Those 4 imo were the best but i also started to taper off once ray left and then the ryan incident only made it worse and once geoff stepped back i basically stopped watching them altogether because there was nothing left for them at that point
Achievement Hunter arrived in my recommended feed once on a train journey to uni. They became my biggest comfort in the years to come and I slowly became introduced to RoosterTeeth as a whole. They were one of the first large RUclips companies I was interested in and I was a devoted fan for several years. After Ray left I found myself drifting; Other people were making content i vibed more with and slowly I stopped watching. I noticed occasionally that their sub count had stagnated and didn’t find myself surprised.
Something had changed, and not just because Ray had left. Becoming part of a big company felt alien to what I knew as a group of friends working on a passion project. I am sad but not surprised that it’s ended this way. There were red flags for a long time and when I heard Bernie was gone I knew they were done. Not because he was the be all and end all but because I knew he wouldn’t go unless he was getting out for a reason.
So, the most based Rooster Teeth member all along, was Caboose?
I'm genuinely in shock.
Thank you I stopped caring about them in like 2019 but grew up with them and wanted to know everything that happened ~ cheers bro
RT fell when Monty died
they did Joel dirty
Joel didn't help himself. He became increasingly neurotic and painted a target on his back. I don't like what happened to him either, but he should have known a little better.
However, I have no doubt the company became increasingly hostile to their more right-leaning members.