Rooster Teeth was a web-based media company most famous for the web serieses Red vs. Blue and RWBY. They started out on April 1, 2003 with the very first episode of Red vs. Blue, a machinima web series that was based on, and used models from, Halo. Eventually, they got very popular and expanded their operations over the years. They’ve been acquired by many companies, who in turn were acquired by other companies, and in recent years RT somehow had the misfortune of being owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
Apparently, Rooster Teeth has not been profitable since 2014. For ten years, they have been operating at a loss. Not even their big fan expo events have broken even. WB has been looking to sell RT since 2021, to no avail. Ultimately, on March 6, 2024, RT’s general manager Jordan Levin released a press statement saying that the company would shut down in two months. The RT employees were not aware of this until after the statement was released.
Rooster Teeth is also infamous for its workplace controversies and sexual harrassment allegations, but that’s a story for another day.
Even though I never was interested in Rooster Teeth’s content until last year, it’s pretty clear that they had a big impact on the early days of the Web. Shows like Red vs. Blue, RWBY, and gen:LOCK hold a special place in many people’s hearts, and it’s sad to see their legacy end.
Rooster Teeth’s final project was Red vs. Blue: Restoration, a feature film that acts as the series finale to Red vs. Blue, which was released on May 7, 2024. I think this is a fitting end to the company. Their legacy starts and ends with RvB.
Here’s to 21 years. Hopefully RWBY can get a proper ending.
Notably: separate. Unless I missed something. They were a handful of twenty-something dickheads who named the company after a rude insult. That went better than they had any right to… which is not to say it went well. Crunch and verbal abuse all over the place. But then independently, a decade later, the guy you medium expect did some penis crimes.
Anyway.
They really had every opportunity to churn out money. They were early on the Minecraft bandwagon and milked the shit out of that. They put out a weekly hour of high-stakes dicking around in GTA IV and then GTA V, and the algorithm loved them. They were relatively early to the podcast boom and absolutely understood the assignment. Later they did a bunch, on various topics, because they realized half their business was just dorks talking to one another. The margins on all that can’t be amazing, but streamers make it work… and they did also take up streaming, after pissing off a key personality who fucked off to do streaming instead.
For animation specifically - how did Camp Camp never get picked up by Adult Swim?