The Rooster Teeth Story: The End?

years of its existence. And not to bury the lead, but now that company is shutting down as Warner Brothers Discovery continues to crack down on expenses and it appears that Rooster Teeth hasn't been profitable in quite some time, despite trying a lot of different things. Now, if all of this is news to you, I recommend you check out the first two parts of the series, which have just recently published. And we are going to pick up in twenty seventeen and work our way up to today,

and this will be the third and final episode. I am pleased to say I don't have a part four the following, so let's go back to our history. So in twenty seventeen, co founder Jeff Ramsey, who had taken on additional leadership roles within the creative side of the

company announced that he was going to take a lengthy sabbatical. Now, Jeff has since spoken very frankly about how he was facing enormous pressure at work while also dealing with personal issues, including a desire to become sober, and this was a really big move from a guy who was a founding member of Drunk Gamers. Thankfully, Rooster Teeth showed support for him during this journey, and Jeff would actually return later that year. In fact, he still appeared in numerous videos

despite quote unquote being on sabbatical. It became something of a running joke. His departure was one indicator that the work at Rooster Teeth was not slacking off and was in fact requiring more and more of the individuals working there at all levels. Also in twenty seventeen, Rooster Teeth announced the creation of a podcast network called the Roost. This department quote connects influential podcasts with brands that understand them end quote. So it's a company that handles things

like sponsorship deals and ad sales for podcasts. Now, I can tell you, as a professional podcaster, having someone dedicated to doing this job is the difference between making podcasts a hobby and making a living from it. It is a lot of work to land those kinds of ad deals and sponsorship deals, and the Roost would serve as a company that would do that on behalf of podcasters,

not just Rooster Teeth podcasters, but others as well. The Roost is notably one of the properties that Warner Brothers Discovery mentioned by name when talking about looking for potential buyers. While the individual shows that Rooster Teeth are kind of up in the air, the Roost is something Warner Brothers Discovery hopes it can sell to an interested party, But that does not necessarily mean the actual Rooster Teeth podcasts will go on, but rather the infrastructure of a dedicated

sale team in marketing team. That's kind of what's being discussed now. I only say that because I saw a lot of discussion about how the podcasts are up for sale, and while that may also be true, that's a different thing than the Roost itself. And I know at least a couple of the podcasts the hosts are hopeful they'll be able to continue. On a recent Anma, which is a podcast that's hosted by co founders Gustavo Sorola and

Jeff Ramsey. There was mention of a desire to keep that podcast going past the shutdown of Rooster Teeth itself, but they also stress this is not a guarantee. These things are still being worked out, and I'm sure the same is true for lots of the other podcasts and other shows that are currently produced by Rooster Teeth. But again, the roost is more about the teams that can market and sell podcasts rather than the teams that actually make

the content. Also, in twenty seventeen, Rooster Teeth released Laser Team two, which obviously was a sequel to Laser Team, their first feature film. Now, like the first film, Laser Team two would find distribution through YouTube Bread, the paid for subscription service on YouTube. I have not seen Laser Team two, but I just checked YouTube and sure enough, the movie is on there. The YouTube doesn't include things like the number of people who have watched a video

on this particular film. I did see that there were only a few hundred likes on the video, so I don't know if this mostly passed under the radar. I didn't even find very many reviews for the movie, so it seems to me like Laser Team two did not have the same kind of impact that the first film had. In twenty eighteen, the company added another online media company

to their ranks called Sugar Pine seven. Now that's a channel that was created by Steven Septik, Clayton James, and James DeAngelis, and Sugar Pine seven produced comedic videos, including an improvised comedy vlog series called Alternative Lifestyle. It actually spawned from a different media company also getting shut down. This other media company was called Source Fed. And just a quick tangent because as we'll see, there's some parallels

with source fed and with Rooster Teeth, all right. So Phil DeFranco, who was already a popular YouTuber at the time, launched source fed back in twenty eleven, and its purpose was to produce short, informative videos on a daily basis. So he got money from YouTube to fund the founding of Source fed, and he hired on some folks who would go on to do a ton of online content like Trisha Hirschberger, Meg Turney, Joe burretta Lee Newton, among others.

In twenty thirteen, another media company called Revision three acquired Source Fed from Phil DeFranco. He took on a leadership role at REV three, but his duties took him further away from Source Fed itself. Revision three was owned by a larger media company because there's always a bigger fish, and that was Discovery Communications, which had acquired REV three back in twenty twelve, So by the time we get to twenty seventeen, Discovery was changing its digital media strategy.

At one point, the company I worked for, How Stuff Works, was actually owned by Discovery Communications. However, we were sold off in twenty fourteen. Discovery sold Revision three to another media company called Group nine Media, and not long after that, the Source Fed channel would get shut down, and that is what prompted several former Source Fed employees to launch

sugar Pine seven. And not too much longer after that, the opportunity came to merge with Rooster Teeth, and it must have seemed like a really good idea at the time because here was this company that had forged a successful path for online content even before YouTube existed, so

it probably seemed like a no brainer to partner with them. However, this relationship wouldn't last very long because Sugar Pine seven would actually leave the Rooster Teeth network in May of twenty nineteen, Sugar Pine seven would also stop most of their production, with the exception of a podcast called Beyond the Pine and fun tangential fact about the whole Source

Fed thing. Meg Turney, who had appeared as one of the original on camera personalities for Source Fed, would leave Source Fed in order to go work for Rooster Teeth, though she would actually leave Rooster Teeth a couple of years later in order to pursue an independent career. In early twenty eighteen, Ezra Cooperstein, who had been the president and COO of Full Screen, became president of Rooster Teeth. Now, Cooperstein had been in the online media game for a while.

He was a co founder and CEO of a company called Maker Studios that had launched back in two thousand and nine. The idea behind Maker Studios was not that different to that of Full Screen. Like it was a company that would find YouTube channels and talent and recruit them under the umbrella of Maker Studios, a multi channel network, and try and help those individual channels grow and to generate revenue in the process. So Disney acquired Maker Studios

in twenty fourteen. Because you know, sometimes a traditional media company will buy a digital media company to kind of leap frog all the tricky parts of building out a digital division from scratch. That story does not always work out so great for all the parties involved. Just as Discovery had shut down Source Fed and just as they had sold off Holstuff Works for a fraction of what they bought us for, Disney would eventually shut down what

was Maker Studios. Anyway, Cooperstein had been there and had already joined Full Screen in twenty eleven before all of that had happened, So he had left Maker Studios well before the Disney acquisition, and he became the president and COO of Full Screen before he moved to head up Rooster Teeth. As president of the company. He would remain in that position only a relatively short while, however, he stepped down on April twenty sixth, twenty nineteen. In a

letter to the community. Cooperstein said he made the decision in order to spend more time with his family, as he had been largely focused on his career for nearly a decade. Matt Hullam, another one of the co founders of Rooster Teeth, would stay on as CEO and then Cooperstein's reports would just shift over to Hullam In the meantime. All right, let's get back to twenty eighteen. The company would continue launching tons of new series, some of which

were more successful than others. It also released a horror film called Bloodfest, and it featured several Rooster Teeth personalities within the film, some playing major characters, some little cameos. Rooster Teeth premiered the film at south By Southwest in twenty eighteen and then landed distribution through the company Cynadime. Synadime would secure a one night screening event in movie theaters through Fathom Events before then making the film available

on various digital services. Rooster Teeth would also get to provide the film for first members the following year, so one year after it came out, people who were subscribed to rooster Teeth as first members could actually watch the film on the rooster Teeth site. The movie received mixed reviews. A lot of critics said that a lot of the film's humor had been done by other horror comedies to better effect. For what it's worth, I thought the film

was okay when I saw it. Mostly I was just impressed that Rooster Teeth was continuing to produce feature length films. Around this time, Rooster Teeth unveiled a new animated series called Genlock, which is a science fiction narrative that boasted some really big named voice talent that included actors like Michael B. Jordan, Mazie Williams, Dakota Fanning, and David Tennant,

among others. The series officially launched in early twenty nineteen with eight episodes, and a second season of eight episodes would come out in twenty twenty one, premiering on what was then called HBO Max. Like the video game division of Rooster Teeth, a lot of critics who have been predicting the downfall of the company for years would point at Genlock as one of the potential reasons for Rooster

Teeth's decline. So critics lamented that the company had been spending a lot of money on really big ticket blue sky swing hard projects like Genlock and Bloodfest to the other feature films, as well as a video game production division that, if we're being fair, had a very rough track record. So whether those critiques have merit or not, I can't say I'm not privy to Rooster Teeth's budget

or anything. Like that, I can't see what the company did and did not choose to spend money on, but we would definitely hear later on that the company had really struggled to become profitable in the wake of the full Screen acquisition. Like, the thing that's been said is that Rooster Teeth hasn't been profitable in a decade. And again, if we trace that decade back from twenty twenty four it takes us to twenty fourteen. That's the year full

Screen acquired Rooster Teeth. Now let's go back to what's going on at a corporate level far above Rooster Teeth itself. So, as I covered in the previous episode, AT and T and the Churnin Group had formed the joint venture Otter Media and Outer Media took a majority share in full Screen. Early in twenty eighteen, Autermedia bought out the rest of the investors of full Screen and outer Media took full

ownership of the company. Otter also took full ownership of a sister media company called Elation at that same time. Elation was the media company that was the owner of Crunchy Role. At this point, Crunchy Role was organized under Elation. Rooster Teeth had been organized under full Screen, so George Strompolis, the founder and head of full Screen, stepped down from

the company. At this point, once AT and T bought out the rest or really outter Media bought out the rest of full Screen, and in the wake of him stepping down and Automedia taking full possession of full Screen, there were a ton of layoffs. Some reports suggested that essentially all Full Screen employees were either let go or organized to work for a different department. In addition, the

streaming service that full Screen oversaw shut down. Then you might remember that I said in a previous episode that in twenty sixteen, AT and T entered into talks to acquire Time Warner. So that whole process did not go smoothly. It was not a guaranteed deal. At one point, the US Department of Justice actually opposed this acquisition, so there was a concern that the acquisition would be harmful to

consumers and to competition in the marketplace. Now, the interesting thing here was that the deal was seen as a vertical acquisition rather than a horizontal one. So what does that mean. Well, with a horizontal deal, you're talking about two companies that are essentially in the same business, and

thus the two companies have a lot of overlap. Vertical deals have less overlap, but they would mean that the new organization, the combined organization, would cover a heck of a lot more businesses, and so in a way, the opposition to the deal was kind of a test to see if US regulators could make a case against vertical mergers, and it turned out that no, at least in this case, they couldn't. And the merger finalized in June twenty eighteen. So AT and T then rebrands Time Warner as Warner Media,

and then things would really start to shake up. We're going to take a quick break. When I come back, i'll explain what I mean. Okay, So we're back, and before the break, I mentioned that AT and T had purchased Time Warner and had rebranded it as Warner Media. They then proceeded to try and tidy things up a little bit, because despite the fact that this was a vertic merger, there were departments that had some overlap that

was redundant. So, for example, you had full Screen, which was an organization that had rooster teeth nested beneath it. You had Elation, which had both Crunchy roll and A and over the top streaming service called VRV underneath it.

Then you had WarnerMedia, which had purchased the media company Machinema back in twenty sixteen, which is interesting because Rooster Teeth and Mashinema were brought together after being associated with one another, mostly because Rooster T's early work was made through the process of Mashinema, which is a lowercase M, and Machinima the company was an uppercase M. They were not one and the same. Rooster Teeth did do some sort of collaborations and work with Masinema, but it was

pretty limited. They never really were corporate partners before, so that meant that the company would hold a reorganization effort over at AT and T slash WarnerMedia. So this is at the high level, right. So then Rooster Teeth gets shuffled away from full Screen to Nest under Elation. So now Elation oversees VRV, Crunchy Role, and Rooster Teeth and Mashinima was supposed to join those other companies in twenty nineteen, but that wouldn't actually happen. In fact, let's do a

quick where are they now for these various entities. So we know about Rooster Teeth. You know, it's in the process of shutting down. It's likely going to close its doors sometime around May of twenty twenty four. Crunchy Roll would actually change corporate hands again. In twenty twenty one. Sony would purchase crunchy Roll from WarnerMedia. There's this whole crunchy Roll fundamation thing too, That's a very complicated story. Also that streaming service VRV that also went with the

deal with crunchy Rolls. So both crunchy Role and VRV would end up going over to Sony. As for Mashinema, it would not find itself under elation with the other brands, as had been the intent. Instead, it got organized under full screen. Nearly every video under Mashinema rapidly disappeared from its YouTube channel following this, either it was deleted or

they got switched to private. So while WarnerMedia sent messages saying the company was working for a smooth transition, it looked to the casual observer that Machinima was effectively being erased from the web. Now. Part of that was likely due to the fact that Machinima worked as a publication platform, so it had original programming as well, and some of

those videos remained up although they weren't necessarily playable. But a lot of the videos that were published on mashinima actually came from third party content creators, So if I had to make a guess, deleting or or setting those videos to private those third party videos was a way to remove the obligation to pay out revenue to former partners.

But again this is wild speculation on my part. The way Masinima went out has subsequently prompted a lot of Rooster Teeth fans to try and archive as much Rooster Teeth content as they possibly can. Given the fact that this precedent exists, Mashinema effectively came to an end. One series from Mashinema Inside Gaming actually did shift over to Rooster Teeth. But now Rooster Teeth is getting shut down, so I guess, really Mishinima is coming to an end. Then AT and T folded Otter Group in with its

new media company, WarnerMedia. So Otter Group was now organized under the Watermedia side of the business. So if we go with Rooster Teeth, that means Rooster Teeth at this point was under Elation. Elation was under Otter Media. Otter Media was part of WarnerMedia, which in turn was part of AT and T, and the green grass grew all around,

and around, the green grass grew all around. This would actually open up some opportunities for Rooster Teeth to work with and incorporate some Warner owned properties into their own stuff, like DC characters, but it also meant a lot more corporate oversight and involvement or interference that didn't always align

with Rooster Teeth's startup culture. Also, Warner Media made some dramatic cuts to Full Screen staff, with some reports saying like essentially everyone who had ever worked for Full Screen just got laid off. So I'm sure that really increased tensions at companies like Rooster Teeth. To see this happening to Mashinema and to Full Screen, I'm sure a lot of people were wondering, when is it going to come for us? So in twenty nineteen, a new leader joined

Rooster Teeth. His name is Jordan Levin and he has a very long list of impressive work credits to his name. He's worked for media companies that include the Walt Disney Company, Warner Brothers. Of course, this was years before AT and T acquired Warner the NFL. He was the chief content Officer for the NFL. He worked for Xbox Entertainment. He

was also the CEO of Awesomeness TV. So he'd spent really his whole career in media and entertainment and it bridged both traditional media like television and film as well as digital media. So he came on to Rooster Teeth and became the new general manager. Other members who had been part of the executive team, people like Matt Hullum who had been serving as CEO, transitioned to creative roles, so they were still leadership roles, but they were no

longer managerial. They were creative. So from what I've heard, Jordan Levin is one of the big reasons that Rooster Teeth stayed in operation for as long as it did. That he managed to keep things going despite the tendency of the various parent companies further up the chain to cut losses. But he did face a massive challenge because Rooster Teeth wasn't profitable and some of the flagship properties

were starting to flag in viewership. The numbers were going down, so Toward the end of twenty nineteen, a couple of founding members of the channel Funhouse, that being Bruce Green and Lawrence Sontag, announced that they were leaving the channel. They both would later explain their reasons for leaving, with on Tag in particular being very critical of the corporate involvement that made creating content a difficult and frustrating experience

over at Funhouse. So he has repeatedly said that he has a lot of respect for the creative folks over at Rooster Teeth, but that on the corporate side, it made working there a really difficult experience. So in September of twenty nineteen, Rooster Teeth held a round of layoffs that directly affected thirteen percent of the company. Now, before the layoffs, the head count at the company was an

incredible four hundred and nineteen people. And I say incredible because remember back in twenty eleven, there were just twenty employees at Rooster Teeth, So you know, it's less than a decade later and it's gone from twenty to four hundred and nineteen. So the layoffs had a really big impact on the folks who remained behind as well. Morale was really suffering. However, the company still released tons of

shows and podcasts and other projects. Rooster Teeth launched face Jam, which is a comedic show that ostensibly reviews fast food, but really it showcases comedy more than anything else, which is great. They launched a really fun podcast called Good

Morning from Hell. This was a limited run podcast. It ran for a good long time, but it did conclude, but it featured a great concept, which is that the Devil's younger brother and his co host, Chris dea Maris personality from Rooster Teeth, have a morning show and they interview an assortment of historical figures and celebrities and mythological creatures who have ended up in Hell for one reason

or another. And then there were a ton of other shows that launched as well, including a Dungeons and Dragons live play style show called Tales from the Stinky Dragon. Again, to list all the shows that Rooster Teeth has put out would be exhaustive. It would take a really long

time just to even name them all. But then we get to twenty twenty, and then absolutely nothing happened, except, you know, there was a global pandemic that forced folks to work from home Rooster Teeth shifted to largely depending on remote work for production, and that obviously had a massive impact on the types of content the company was able to create. Obviously, the company had to cancel live events planned for that year that included RTX as well

as Let's Play live events. That was a big bummer, and that year a bunch of terrible scandals would also

hit the company, which was an even bigger bummer. Now I mentioned already that during the Black Lives Matter movement, Mika Burton, former employee over at Rooster Teeth, would actually speak up about why she left the company after she faced cases of neglect and abuse and said that people weren't listening to her or taking her seriously after she brought her concerns up to folks, and that she wasn't going to just you know, endure that, so she left

the company. Well over at Achievement Hunter, another terrible, terrible thing happened. Another terrible scandal unfolded. Actually it had been going on for a while, but it was only just uncovered over the later half of twenty twenty, and that was when Achievement Hunter cast member Ryan Haywood would have to leave the company as a result of violating the

code of conduct, which is putting things lightly. It was later revealed he had used his celebrity to form inappropriate relationships with female fans for several years, sort of a predatory kind of approach. You know, the fact that there's a different power dynamic, right if you are a celebrity and fans are they've built up this parasocial relationship in their minds with you. To take advantage of that is

really imhorrant. So the Achievement Hunter crew had to face the tough decision at that point, after Ryan had been fired from the company, do they take all the content that he had been in, which was a considerable number of videos because he had been part of the company for a long time. Would do they take that and just delete it or set it to private or do they leave it standing. They mostly chose the second option. A few videos actually would disappear, but most of them

would remain up. But it was a tough decision. People were very deeply affected by what Ryan had done. But then over at Funhouse, which again that's the Los Angeles based media part of Rooster Teeth, there was a similar situation. One of the co founders of Fun House, Adam Kovic was fired due to other violations that are rather disturbing in graphic and so I'm going to leave them out

of this discussion. You can easily find information about it if you search, but suffice it to say that these back to back incidents of two high profile on screen personalities being fired for inappropriate conduct started to raise a lot of questions, and it fueled tons of videos that proclaim that the end was pretty freakin nigh for Rooster Teeth, But as it turned out, the company would actually continue

for four more years. A pair of important folks who did leave the company in twenty twenty on their own terms were Bernie and Ashley Burns Ashley Jenkins. So Bernie Burns, I'll remind you, was co founder of the company. He was the head writer for Red versus Blue for many years. It was essentially Bernie that was seen as like the guy at Rooster Teeth, and he had led at Rooster Teeth in lots of different leadership roles, both executive and creative roles, but he had stepped back a bit over

the course of a year. In twenty nineteen, he stepped back as co host of the rooster Teeth podcast that was kind of an early indicator that he was preparing to exit the company as a whole. He announced his resignation on June eleventh, twenty twenty, and he and his wife, Ashley, who had been in online media for most of her

professional career as well. She held many roles at rooster Teeth former member of the frag Dolls video game Professional video game League or players, they would both leave and then they would relocate. Ultimately they would go move to Scotland. They recently launched their own podcast called Morning Somewhere. I recommend listening to that. It's pretty delightful and it also recently has included some bits that talked more about the legacy of rooster Teeth and sort of the fallout of

the decision to shut the company down. Several other folks with prominent roles in Rooster Teeth also would leave in twenty twenty for various reasons that included people who were

on screen talent, included writers for popular series. For those who remained, they kept operations going as best they could under very trying circumstances, and Rooster Teeth kept in business for the following few years, but things would shake up again in twenty twenty two when AT and T would sell off Warner Media and we would get Warner Brothers

Discovery in its place. So yeah, you might get the feeling that media companies are really unstable places and that on a corporate level, there's a lot of hot potato going on. From my own personal experience, I can tell you that's definitely been what I've seen When I worked for House Stuff Works. I think there were five different corporate owners of how Stuff works while I worked there, before we spun off into Stuff Media and then joined iHeartMedia.

So again that's anecdotal. It's not meant to be evidence that the media landscape is inherently unstable, but it's been my experience, and when I research shows like this, and every couple of years you're talking about a different corporate structure, it really kind of stresses that it's not far off

the mark. And I'm sure this also came as another hit to morale for at least some of the folks at Rooster Teeth to see this change from AT and T owning WarnerMedia, to WarnerMedia becoming part of Discovery and getting Warner Brothers Discovery in its place. We'll talk more

about why after we take another quick break. Okay, so before the break, I talked about how Discovery had come over and offered to purchase WarnerMedia from AT and T and as a result we would get Warner Brothers Discovery, and how this all kind of came to a head in twenty twenty two. Well, the reason why some of the folks at Rooster Teeth were probably a bit anxious about this deal is that some of them had worked under digital media companies that had once been part of Discovery,

and they remember how that went. Because a spoiler alert, you might have thought David Zaslov of Warner Brothers Discovery was on a warpath to cancel shows once that merger happened, But that stuff was happening over at Discovery Communications quite a bit already, and it really wasn't very long after these companies had completed this big acquisition deal that Zaslov started to slash high visibility projects. Infamously, this included a

film about Batgirl. Reportedly, that movie was nearly finished, and instead of finishing it up and then releasing the film, Warner Brothers Discovery would write off the production for tax reasons. Now that meant that they legally could not ever release the movie, that that movie's never going to be seen by anyone, even though most of the work had already

been done. So a corporate leader who can make those kinds of harsh decisions is scary to work for, because you never know when your department is going to be the next one on the chopping block. You could very much make the argument that these kinds of decisions, while really difficult, are also necessary because in this particular case, Warner Brothers Discovery had a truly enormous amount of debt

that they needed to be able to cut. It still doesn't make it easier to swallow when you see these projects that people put a lot of work and effort into get swept away. However, doomsayers aplenty once again started to predict that Rooster Teeth was not long for this world, and again that had been going on since twenty fourteen with the full Screen acquisition. So it turns out that

telling the future is harder than it looks. For more evidence of that, just looked to my various predictions episodes for a year and find out how many of them I was like almost completely wrong about so as it stands, Rooster Teeth would end up sticking around until March of twenty twenty four. And to be clear, it's still operating right now, though it's on borrowed time right now as of the recording of this podcast. That is so, things changed a lot in the last couple of years at

Rooster Teeth. There was an increased push on the various types of entertainment, like the various channels, the various videos and podcasts. There was a bigger and bigger push to urge viewers to become first members or YouTube channel members, in other words, to become paid subscribers more than just

you know, viewers or listeners of the content. Now, if I had to guess, I would say this was kind of a top down directive that they were being told by their bosses, Hey, you need to get these numbers up, and the intent was to turn things around from a revenue perspective. So, according to numerous pieces written in the wake of Warner Brothers Discovery announcing Rooster Teeth's shut down, it's been reported that, like I said, rooster Teeth has

not been profitable for a decade. And again, if we look back that's all the way back to the Full Screen acquisition. I don't know for sure that the Full Screen deal is what you would call the beginning of the end, but it doesn't look good at least from a casual glance. Now that being said, I also don't know if Rooster Teeth would have maintained its success without the acquisition from Full Screen. It's impossible to say. We

don't know. We only know what has happened. We don't know what could have happened if Rooster Teeth had remained independent. Would it still be around, would it be successful? Or are the problems that plagued Rooster Teeth ones that are

unrelated to corporate ownership. You could argue that part of the issue was that the media company was built around the sense of humor and the perspective of a group of co founders and their particular audience had aged out of the material and newer audiences didn't resonate with the material on the same level. Then it doesn't matter who your corporate owner is. If you're no longer appealing to an audience well and you're a media company, that's a

big problem. So maybe Full Screens acquisition was the beginning of the end, or maybe that was immaterial. Maybe Rooster Teeth was always going to have a limited lifespan. Now, as I said earlier in this episode, there were other controversies as well. Departing employees had some pretty harsh words for the company. You can go to glass door and look up Rooster Teeth and there's some pretty brutal things there. This also included some serious accusations of discrimination and harassment.

So the feeling I've always had is that a lot of the problems originated above the organization itself. It kind of came from levels above Rooster Teeth, But some of them were clearly issues within Rooster Teeth, and it's hard to tell what was endemic to the culture of the company and what emerged as a result of corporate control. One particularly upsetting series of claims came from a former employee named Caden Jensen, and she posted a blog in

twenty twenty two. She said she was the subject of homophobic slurs, including ones that were said on camera with just slight changes to the slur to make it camera friendly, I guess. She said she worked for really long hours as a kind of contract worker before she was officially hired on as Rooster Teeth staff, but she was never paid for that earlier work she did. She also said that she and many other employees had to work incredibly long hours in a crunch time atmosphere that very rarely

led up. This was a big complaint among many folks at the company, who a lot of the ones who had left the company in particular, said that they just they were tired of the incredibly long hours. And I think this probably was a culture issue at Rooster Teeth because remember rooster Teeth started with five co founders getting together and doing everything themselves. So these five people were

working incredibly long hours. In fact, when rooster Teeth first started, they were working a different job as well, Like they had a job job and then they had Rooster Teeth. So the folks who started the company had this culture of we got to get it done, and you do whatever it takes to get it done. It doesn't matter how long it takes, how many hours you have to be up, you got to get it done. And I think that just kind of became part of the corporate culture.

But it's not a very healthy culture to create and to nourish, right, It's much better to find ways to operate without making people work themselves to death. But I think that was part of the problem, is that because the founders had had the experience of working these incredibly long hours and doing so much, that they didn't have much perspective or perhaps sympathy for people who were asking to not have that kind of burden put onto themselves.

Cayden also said that the company's efforts to promote diversity and equality were far more for show in front of the camera and being a different story behind the scenes. The responses from the company proved that at least some of the claims Cayden had made were true. Employees like Gavin Free came forward and accepted responsibility for using those slurs and apologized for that behavior while promising to learn

and work to be better. The company itself issued a statement admitting that quote we have faced inevitable mistakes and interpersonal challenges end quote. As well as that quote, twenty twenty was a year of broad societal change that brought past conduct to our attendant end quote, which I imagine is reference to the Black Lives Matter movement in twenty twenty, as well as how employees former employees like Mika Burton had brought concerns forward. She was not the only one,

but she was probably the most famous one. The company had to face the fact that, as I've said before, Rister Teeth started as a company launched by a group of guys, primarily white guys who are straight, and it launched way back in two thousand and three, and much of the humor of that group of guys consisted of them ribbing each other like there's a lot of humor of them cutting each other down and insulting one another, and it was all jokes, but that informed the culture

of the company, and the real problems would arise as the company would grow and begin hiring on people who weren't just white, straight guys, folks who didn't necessarily enjoy the privileges that straight white guys enjoy and who are far more vulnerable. It's not necessarily the same experience for those kinds of folks to endure the quote unquote fun abuse that had permeated the original members of Rooster Teeth. So in a way, the company was coming to terms

with itself and having to grow up a bit. And it wasn't a painless process, but it was I think a necessary one. Now, before I go any further, I also need to say that Cayden herself had some pretty serious skeletons in the closet as far as acceptance and diversity and all that kind of stuff. Fans of Rooster Teeth did a dive into her background and they found sort of old videos that had comedic bits where Cayden

had included awful stuff like racial slurs. So Rooster Teeth defenders used this in part to discredit Caiden, But I think it says a lot that the official company response appeared to hold itself accountable for at least some of what was appearing in Cayden's blog post, so it's not

like it was all made up. Twenty twenty three marked the twentieth anniversary of Rooster Teeth, and in celebration of that milestone, the company released several video projects that revisited things that they had produced over the past twenty years. For example, Chris Deamris and Kerrie Shawcross returned to New

Zealand to retrace their steps from a simple walk. That was the video that showed the two making the one hundred and thirty mile trek between the shooting location for Hobbiton and the shooting location for Mordor in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings series. Other departments, like Achievement Hunter would release videos revisiting popular concepts that they had done in the past but they had since moved on from.

But a lot of other changes in twenty twenty three would end up upsetting old time fans of the company, so Gustavo Sorola announced he was leaving the popular Rooster Teeth podcast along with podcast regulars Gavin Free and Barbara Dunkleman. Gustavo would hand over control to a younger group of podcasters.

He didn't leave the company. He was still doing other projects with Rooster Teeth, but the rooster Teeth podcast was a very long running and popular show, so a lot of folks who had kind of really adopted that show as well one of their favorites, were upset. Achievement Hunter

also announced that that group was disbanding. Some of the members went on to form a new comedy sketch group within Rooster Teeth called dog Bark, but Achievement Hunter would no longer be a thing, and the view counts on Rooster Teeth's YouTube channels seemed to be in further decline. Reports were that things just weren't much better for subscriber numbers either. In fact, many's former subscribers had kind of ended their support in the wake of the various scandals

that had broken out over the previous years. At RTX twenty twenty three, the company gave attendees a big surprise. They showed a preview for Red Versus Blue Season nineteen, and they revealed that it was the final full length season for the show, that this was going to wrap up the main Red Versus Blue story, and it was also a surprise that Bernie Burns returned, not just to voice his character Church in the Red Versus Blue series

or epsilon. Actually to go into all of that would take away too much time, but also he would be the writer for season nineteen, something that he had not done for many years, and Matt Hullam was directing the season. Two of the company's co founders would be responsible for

bringing a conclusion to their flagship series. And while the announcement was made that the company would shut down before Red Versus Blue Season nineteen has actually premiered, reports from the company suggest that as of right now, Red Versus Blue Season nineteen will come out regardless of the shutdown of the company. That report that Rooster Teeth is actually coming to an end, that came as employees gathered for an all hands meeting on March sixth, twenty twenty four.

Around that same time, Entertainment Press covered the story. So clearly Warner Brothers Discovery gave the reports to the various media out there and just told them when the story would be live, and they ran with it. So like the world found out about Roaster Teeth shutting down around the same time that the employees did. There's been a little bit of conflicting information about when they're actually shutting down.

The figure I hear most often is sixty days from the announcement on March six, twenty twenty four, so two months after that announcement. There are other reports that suggest that some stuff might stretch on a little longer than that in order for everything to be wrapped up, you know, things like rolling out the season nineteen of Red Versus Blue. Perhaps maybe that goes a little longer. We don't know yet.

Employees are receiving a severance package, and it sounds like that's based off seniority at the company, So the longer you've been with the company, the longer or more helpful that severance packages. Somewhere between one hundred and fifty to two hundred folks are actually being let go, plus contractors and freelancers. It's a really rough end to an online media company that had such a huge impact on web

culture and entertainment distribution models. In the end, Rooster Teeth really set an example of how to build a success business online, at least for you know, a given amount of time, and they found success not just financially, but

through building a passionate and invested community of viewers. I can't tell you how many times I heard stories about people who did everything they could to get hired by the company that made the stuff they happened to love, and for those few who did manage to do that, it seemed like a dream come true. Now, over time, the realities of production became evident. Right Crunch time is brutal,

even if you love your work. I would argue crunch time is brutal, especially if you love your work, because you'll push yourself even harder than you have to in order to meet various deadlines. It also discovered, you know, that changes in direction, corporate direction can be really demoralizing, and that corporate cultural issues are really hard to reckon

with and to fix when things are broken. But if you watched that video live stream that Rooster Teeth held the day after everyone found out the company was shutting down, it's up on YouTube. You can actually watch the whole thing. If you watch that, you will see a group of people who clearly loved the company they worked for, and more importantly, they loved the people they worked with. And that's not nothing. So now it's time for us to

close the book on Rooster Teeth. It remains to be seen if any of the properties created by Rooster Teeth are going to experience life after the closure of the company. Beyond that, there are a lot of other questions that just remain unanswered, you know, like do you ever wonder why we're here? I hope you enjoyed these episodes about Rooster Teeth. My apologies if you had no interest in that material whatsoever. Clearly, this is something that I had a deep interest in because I fell in love with

the work of the company in the early days. And while I haven't really followed it as much in more recent years. I feel really sad for folks who work in online media and who find them sells out of a gig. And a lot of the folks I have met and I really like them, and they impressed me with their creativity and their work ethic and their dedication to one another. So I just wanted to give it it's due. I know there are tons of different think pieces and video essays and such about the company, but

this one was from my perspective. We will now move on from Rooster Teeth and talk about totally different things in the next upcoming episodes, so I look forward to doing that, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.