Formed in 2003 and helping to innovate and give rise to machinima through their now-infamous Halo series, Red vs. Blue, Rooster Teeth announced on March 6 that it would begin a months-long closure process after more than 20 years in operation.
Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery has said it would immediately begin seeking buyers for the company’s various properties as the closure process continues. The current estimate at time of publishing is 60 days, which would flag May 5 as the company’s final day if all comes to pass.
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While the news itself dropped suddenly, with a Variety article publishing as the Rooster Teeth staff were in their all-hands meeting receiving the news themselves, fans past and present were sad but unsurprised. What began as friends making drunk game reviews in the earliest days of the internet blossomed into a multimillion dollar entertainment company, but the writing has been on the wall for years now.
The Collapse Of Classic Rooster Teeth
When you host a gaming empire like Rooster Teeth did, it’s not long before the personalities talking over the video games begin to overshadow the product itself. The original members of the company are lovingly referred to as the “Founding Fathers,” and consist of Burnie Burns, Joel Heyman, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, and Gus Sorola.
Things are bound to change over the course of 20 years, so only three of the six still remain with Rooster Teeth at the time of its closure (Hullum, Ramsey, and Sorola), with Saldaña remaining as a contractor and Burns parting ways amicably in 2020.
Heyman, voice actor behind the affably gullible Caboose in Red vs. Blue, though, was quietly laid off sometime before Burns left the company, with fans unaware of where he had gone or the reason for his dismissal. The news of his departure came on the heels of a now deleted Twitter comment Heyman made at the height of the BLM protests in 2020, expressing that the business owners who owned guns would fare much better when protestors came knocking. When a fan asked how he still existed at Rooster Teeth with an opinion like his, Joel’s response was, “I don’t :)”.
With Caboose quietly recast after 17 seasons, and neither Heyman nor Rooster Teeth making a statement, fans were left to speculate. After years of conspiracy theories and incendiary comments, Heyman left Rooster Teeth sometime in either 2019 or 2020 and has become fairly silent online since.
Staffing changes at Rooster Teeth didn’t stop at Heyman – long standing leadership at the company was replaced with people hired from outside corporate positions, and fans worried that they may not know enough about the heart of what made Rooster Teeth so special. At the same time as suits were stepping into senior roles, Adam Kovic (of Funhouse, acquired by Rooster Teeth) was let go in 2020 after a series of inappropriate photos leaked online.
After his departure, former colleagues spoke out about the numerous times he’d been indecent with them throughout his career, too. Bruce Greene, another former Funhaus employee and prominent on-camera personality, stated publicly on Reddit after Kovic’s dismissal that a large reason he left earlier that year was because he’d gone to HR to report Kovic’s behavior and was essentially laughed out of the room.
At the time all of this was coming to light, several former Rooster Teeth employees – namely Micah Burton and Kdin Jenzen – wrote exposes about their time there, citing harassment both internal at the company and external from fans that Rooster Teeth did nothing to abate. Burton is Black and Jenzen is trans, and both felt their company didn’t do enough to try to protect them. In response, Rooster Teeth apologized, swore to work on its diversity, replaced their whole HR team, lowered its deadline crunch, and reduced their upload schedule.
The final nail in the coffin for plenty of fans, though, was Ryan Haywood’s dismissal at the same time. As Kovic was being let go, news broke that Haywood’s nudes had also been leaked after he texted them to a fan. When it came out shortly after that the fan in question was only 17, things crossed from “unfortunate” and into “illegal.” Haywood and the fan both swear she said she was 18 when they met, but the damage had already been done – other fans with similar histories began to share their own experiences with Haywood grooming them within the Rooster Teeth community.
Rooster Teeth Was Stuck In The Past, Refusing To Accept The Future
Morale at Rooster Teeth was at an all-time low. Haywood, a prominent and long-time employee, was fired immediately and without question, while remaining staff were left to try and answer for his actions.
Haywood’s firing came at a tumultuous time, with a switch to new talent already in the works as older employees moved onto new projects. The most senior members of the company had begun to change their roles considerably with new personalities taking their place on-camera, but the shift seemed to accelerate in the wake of Haywood’s alleged crimes. Slowly but surely, familiar faces began blending into the background.
Between staffing changes, the restructuring of content to fit with said changes, and fans having mixed reactions to it all, Rooster Teeth was operating at a loss in 2020, and fans began to wonder if this wound was self-inflicted. It became a community meme that Rooster Teeth didn’t care what its fans thought, often meeting genuine critiques with statements to the effect of “go watch something else if you don’t like it.”
Some of these were petty gripes, sure – people not liking certain personalities or games – but a good number of the complaints were valid. A key example of this was when it received comments that the mixing on some videos had rendered certain speaking voices distractingly louder than others, and in response, Rooster Teeth released a shirt for sale that read, “Loud is what we do!” as they continued to edit the videos in this way, claiming these critiques were about silencing Black voices instead of pointing out inconsistencies in mixing.
Rooster Teeth dug its heels in every time. It expected waves of new fans to replace the scores lost through years of drama, scandals, and drops in content quality as the company spread onto new platforms like TikTok or its own website to try and maximize profits. Viewership and ad revenue had been declining steadily, prompting the company to move the majority of its content to a paid subscription tier on its website. The new fans just never came.
Rooster Teeth celebrated its 20th birthday in March of last year, uploading an assortment of content to celebrate its two-decade legacy. The grand finale was meant to take place at RTX 2023 in Austin, Texas from July 7-9, the first in-person RTX convention to be held since Covid restrictions were lifted after a fully masked and distanced RTX 2022.
Prior years consumed downtown Austin for entire weekends, requiring the Austin Convention Center and multiple neighboring hotels to accommodate everything. But 2023 attendees reported that using only the main expo hall and three of its panel rooms felt excessive at times given the content offered throughout the weekend. Fast forward to December, and general manager Jordan Levin would announce that the event would not continue.
The Writing Was On The Wall For Rooster Teeth
When Rooster Teeth’s closure was formally announced on March 6, fans weren’t exactly surprised, but it still affected them. There was a massive outpouring of love, support, and fond memories from the people whose lives Rooster Teeth had impacted in its two-decade run. Staff and fans alike gathered in these communal spaces to share memories from the highest highs to the lowest lows for the first time in years.
It’s wild to see what was once a dominant multimedia conglomerate disassembled at its base and sold off for parts. A live stream took place the day after the announcement, to host any of its roughly 150 now laid-off employees who wanted to participate, and the result was an hour and a half of everyone from the company coming together to celebrate and mourn in equal measure.
Though it's leaving behind a complicated history, Rooster Teeth has done countless good and has been part of the lives of millions of people around the world during its tenure. Everyone who has ever enjoyed its content found something to call their own, and hopefully, that’s what we come to remember. A company marred by controversies still has plenty of great people at the core, and though the future of Rooster Teeth remains uncertain, the sprawling legacy they leave behind can’t be understated.
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