EFFORTPOST The Fall of RoosterTeeth and Fate of RWBY — Meta Effortpost Part 3

The RT subreddit jannies have "temporarily" suspended rule 6. Rule 6 says "6. Do not come here to complain about how "RT is dead"."

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

For the rest of RT's history see my previous effortposts.

Part 1

Part 2

The End of RoosterTeeth

We covered the majority of the reasons why RoosterTeeth eventually went under in the previous post. In this Part 3 I'll wrap up a few points I didn't have room to elaborate on previously before detailing the actual collapse and aftermath. After all there isn't any single climactic scandal or crisis that did them in on its own.

Though the following point did contribute heavily to RWBY's decline.

Animation is Expensive

I'M GENLOCKING!

— Achievement Hunter

RoosterTeeth didn't have an actual animation department back when they hired Monty Oum for RvB. Monty and some of his "apprentices" handled all of the cgi for RvB seasons 8-10, and the first Volume of RWBY couldn't have had more than fifteen people total behind its animation. The success of RWBY is what created the proper Animation Studio, and going forward it would handle the rest of RWBY and RvB along with a few new IPs RoosterTeeth tried to get off the ground. RT's other animated productions include Camp Camp, Nomad of Nowhere, X-Ray and Vav, S*x Swing, and RoosterTeeth Animated Adventures.

The main show of note however is Gen:LOCK. Out of all the post-RWBY properties, Gen:LOCK was RT's biggest hope of recapturing that lightning in a bottle and was easily the most expensive production. Indeed it's been claimed that Gen:LOCK appropriated funds from other animated productions since its creator also just so happened to be head of the animation department

As I mentioned in the first thread, Xoomers were some of the first weebs and American anime is their fault Gen:LOCK creator Gray Haddock had originally only done minor voice work when he started with RT. But that made him a professional compared to everyone else involved with developing RWBY, a very indie show in which RT was turning to their animators, HR employees, and podcasters just to fill out the voice acting roles. Gray voiced and was popular enough to have the character stick around for three seasons when he was only meant to be in the first episode. When RoosterTeeth formed their proper animation studio in 2014, Gray was made Head of Animation. He was also a writer and assistant director for RWBY.

Gray grew up watching mecha and cyberpunk anime and much like Monty Oum he must have decided at a young age that he'd make his own cool thing if ever he got the chance. As CRWBY (production crew of RWBY) began work on Volume 5 and RT decided on what the best big show would be, Gray pitched his idea for RoosterTeeth's very own robot franchise and used his position over the animation department to give his pitch a few advantages over any others. For one thing he could have the artists draw up concept art on demand

Gray really wanted Gen:LOCK to be a full blown production comparable less to web shows and more towards network television. Not only would the production costs greatly exceed any previous RT animated endeavor. The show also shilled out for actual talent from SAG-AFTRA. Apparently it really started to come together after a concept artist used Michael B. Jordan as a reference for the main character and Gray sent an email to Jordan's agent.

I should note that at the time Jordan was most well known for the 2015 Fantastic Four movie so this might explain why RT's random robot pitch was taken seriously. But even though he eventually went and did Black Panther he still agreed to work on the project, apparently because he's a huge weeb and liked the idea personally. His company Outlier Society Productions even co-produced the show. Other names attached include Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) Dakota Fanning (Independent movies apparently) Koichi Yamadera (Cowboy Bebop) and David Tennant (Doctor Who)

No, really

Work on Gen:LOCK started in ‘17 at which point Gray left CRWBY to work on Volume 5 without finishing his workload or finding a replacement He also siphoned both funds and animators from other projects while still demanding every show hit their deadlines. It was at this point that RT started bringing on unpaid interns to finish their animation — more details on this in the "Controversies" section of my second RT effort post.

RWBY Volume 6 and Gen:LOCK were produced together through mandatory crunch time and free labor from interns promised a job at RT after 90 days only to be shown the door as soon their contracts expired Gen:LOCK's development went well into the red and was pushed back to 2019. It's been estimated that both GL and Volume 6 had about a third of their seasons made entirely for free thanks to not paying overtime. People were working up to 80 hours a week, with management offering empty platitudes about the crunch and how they'd resolve it. The planned number of episodes was cut from 12 to 8. RT had a whole pipeline set up with Full Sail Animation to provide them with yet more interns for the meat grinder.

Finally Gen:LOCK premieres in January as a FIRST exclusive. The show did moderately well in viewership and reviews. A dedicated fandom formed — probably the third largest RT fandom behind RvB and RWBY if that means anything — and the show actually made it to syndication on Cartoon Network's Toonami.

But as such an expensive and time consuming production with Hollywood actors attached, Gen:LOCK broke RoosterTeeth's bank and fell into the trap of needing to be a massive, breakout hit in order to make any kind of profit. Since RWBY made a lot of money as an indie success story, RoosterTeeth had hoped something with more budget would make proportionally more profit.

Gen:LOCK was their animation department's biggest misstep and a significant reason why the decline became terminal. Gen:LOCK was simply too expensive and didn't prove to be worth the investment. None of the other shows were runaway successes either. In the grand scheme RT's animation department only served to drain the company's treasury.

In the wake of the show's release RoosterTeeth's ‘19 Glassdoor scandal broke and soured their reputation along with the myth of their being a great company for animators to get their foot in the door. The RT founders had apparently given Gray Haddock a lot of leeway in animation and were unpleasantly surprised to learn how the department had been handled. He resigned soon after and RT never attempted anything this ambitious again.

Gen:LOCK itself wasn't (quite) dead and in October it was announced that Season 2 would initially premiere with HBO Max before becoming available to FIRST members.

But RoosterTeeth simply did not have the capability to make such a show anymore and so HBO was given reins to write and produce while outsourcing the actual animation to the people who did Planet Sheen and Fanboy & Chum Chum. The Ship of Theseus that was season 2 released in November 2021 and, well, I've never heard of anyone who liked it. Modern RWBY may not be great but it at least has an extremely dense fanbase conditioned over years to watch the show uncritically. Gen:LOCK died in its infancy and the few remaining fans mostly just ignore season 2 these days.

People are letting their nostalgia blind them as to what RT was at the time of its death: a corporate entity like any else, with widely documented worker-abuse issues. It's a shame that the studio that once pioneered independent animation on the internet became just another cog in the machine that was thrown out after it became useless, but it did it to itself.

/r/RWBYcritics

Speaking of RWBY, this show too became more and more expensive with every season and had probably stopped being profitable by the time RT imploded. Volume 9 supposedly cost over 6.6 million to produce and had to be funded with help from Crunchyroll in exchange for an exclusivity deal.

Looking back it's a quiet miracle the show even lasted nine seasons. There was almost never a time something wasn't wrong with RoosterTeeth's animation department. In brief,

V1: No budget lol. The only reason RWBY is a 3D show/got made at all is because Monty was already used to the animation software and wasn't asking RoosterTeeth to go find a studio.

V2: No major problems, but…

V3: Monty dies

V4: Switched to another graphics program entirely. Shane's infamous letter also comes out around this time (detailed in the previous post) He and other Monty loyalists are dismissed from the company.

V5: This is when Gray Haddock began taking resources for Gen:LOCK. The volume also had more episodes than usual.

V6: Gen:LOCK problems continued. The Glassdoor scandal happened for RT. Actor Vic Mignogna was also fired from his role on sexual harassment allegations.

V7: No problems, however…

V8: Covid and the Texas power crisis from Greg Abbot's paraplegic witch magic snow storm Also a longer season than normal

V9: Continued production issues from Covid. Made at the same time as the Justice League crossover movies. More RT workplace misconduct. Led to a 2 year hiatus.

V10: Isn't even greenlit. I'm bringing it up because CRWBY claimed in early March that preproduction was done and they were waiting for the go-ahead

In retrospect cartoons pushed RoosterTeeth to its limit.

Collapsing Influence and Fading Influencers

REMINDER THESE BIPOCS ARE WORSE AT BUSINESS THAN COLLEGEHUMOR OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS

@KoreanKongKing

In this section we'll discuss the evolution of the podcast half of RoosterTeeth. Many of these changes represented attempts to reverse course on the company's decline or, in the case of some influencers, to get away from the sinking ship.

First I'll bring up the Let's Play family. To clarify, "let's plays" are videos where people would play a video game and, uh... that's it. IIRC they go back to the noughties and predate any real streaming personalities. Let's Play as a proper noun was created by Achievement Hunter as a channel specifically for their relevant let's plays, originally featuring videos from just the main six AH personalities with the videos uploaded to YouTube. As RT grew Let's Play also featured people from Funhaus and other Fullscreen aquired groups like ScrewAttack. Gradually this evolved into a larger network.

On May 31, 2017, it was announced that YouTubers JT Machinima, NoahJ456, LazarBeam, and Steven Suptic (now known as Sugar Pine 7) had joined Let's Play, with JT Machinima being the first of which to have merchandise sold through the RT Store. Others to eventually join include Criken2, James Buckley, BedBananas, Tomato Gaming, ChilledChaos, Retro Replay, Castle Super Beast, GaLm, and Tom Fawkes.

Yeah I haven't heard of most of these people either There was also Etika though and I remember him entirely through the rDrama gayop

As mentioned previously, the evolution of YouTube and changes made to its policies regarding advertising revenue hurt RoosterTeeth over time. Aside from trying to make up for it by expanding on FIRST and their own website, they noticed the Let's Play "family" had always been a consistent source of income and was relatively less affected by YouTube's evolution. They represented numerous personalities and different kinds of content that still appealed to the ever changing algorithm while having a low overhead that RT wasn't entirely responsible for. RT hoped the Let's Play group would keep them relevant no matter how YouTube continued to evolve.

Unfortunately they never succeeded in cultivating the goal of having this many more Achievement Hunters. The partners that were already hemorrhaging continued to do poorly and others simply declined to renew their contracts as soon as they were up. The successful members must have decided there wasn't much to gain from working with RT. Individual influencers certainly didn't appreciate RT's restrictions on their individual streaming. Ultimately the Let's Play family was pointless.

Funhaus used to be really good before they lost their whole cast and replaced them by the same kind of sanctimonious r-slurs that made the rest of roosterteeth unwatchable.

They removed all the edge that made funhouse great. The new cast would call hr if you tried to make them watch vr gay porn.

-- @OutKongged and @w1n5t0n

This is as good a time as any to bring up how RT podcasts and meta gaming content simply lost SOVL over time. The let's play formula Achievement Hunter pioneered requires entertaining people with chemistry. Parasocialmaxxers want to feel like they're watching friends play a game together. RT started sticking random "influencers" in front of the screen in the hopes of hitting it big on the algorithm, never mind that these were random people who didn't know each other and were always talking over each other. Losing more and more of their originals to scandals and retirement and replacing them with culture warrior/"zoomers like this kind of thing right?" types didn't help either.

The comedy that the original g*mer dudebro demographic liked disappeared and RT never grabbed the limited attention spans of youngins to replace them.

I don't think there were any other major RT events and scandals left to cover so we're gonna start skipping ahead. The following developments are recent enough to overlap with the history of rDrama.net and represent some of the final happenings in the history of the company.

In September '23 it was announced that RT's longrunning Achievement Hunter would no longer produce content. The stated reason for this was the entire AH cast moving onto different creative projects throughout Rooster Teeth -- BlackKrystel and Jack getting more involved at Inside Gaming, Ky working behind the scenes, Lindsay doing voice work and Twitch streams for RWBY V-Tubing, and Geoff and Gavin doing the thing mentioned in a following section. Meanwhile Trevor, Michael, Alfredo, and Joe created an entirely new channel called Dogbark, which premiered its first video in October.

Michael and others apparently felt stifled by the AH name but even the RT community wasn't super enthusiastic and the subreddit left comments like the following,

I wish ya'll the best, and I'll give it a fair shot, but this video doesn't instill confidence guys.

Im gonna be honest this trailer just gave me "We're trying to be Smosh" vibes

"The community has consistently told us they dont like scripted shorts or improv bits and want us to just go back to being 4 to 6 friends playing games together and shooting the shit. So we have decided to move to a new channel that is exclusively scripted shorts and improv bits"

Incredible.

great to see them leaning into their weaknesses

Views were never great.

Always Open (aka the finger me podcast)

DAE vaginas amirite, ladies?

-- @JimieWhales

In December Rt shut down All Good No Worries which was meant to be a network focusing on female fans (And yes s were involved namely Charlotte from Funhaus) This was also the third and final time the Always Open podcast had been put on pause.

In the wake of Achievement Hunter's dissolution Geoff and Gavin started the FrickFace Podcast with Andrew Panton as well as becoming the new hosts of Let's Play. Some have said this was more akin to old AH because it was back to being a group of RT originals playing the games. This was one of the more active groups in RT's final hours.

The fact that this was announced 30 minutes before the end of rooster teeth

-- /r/fuckfacepod

One of the funnier moments of RT's closing Ratyboy Adventures is a game that Andrew Panton subjected FrickFace to in a Let's Play video. For whatever reason he then decided to buy the rights to the character and so on March 6th, 2024 it was announced that RatyBoy would become the official mascot of Let's Play.

This, erm, news came out just thirty minutes before it was announced RoosterTeeth as a whole would be shutting down

Anyway, this is just some noteworthy tidbits from RT's very late history. Remember the true and boring background cause of their collapse was declining ratings and stagnation over time.

The Fall

RT's cause of death is via shooting themselves in the foot way too much over the years, or death via a million and one papercuts if you prefer. A studio like theirs surviving twenty-one years should be a success story, but they've been treading water for so long it doesn't feel that way, and despite many fans being upset with WBD, for all we know, they only pulled the plug once RT's brain function fully stopped.

-- /r/RWBYcritics

And now we reach the end.

Since it's not a podcast I'll mention in this section that the last RTX convention was held in ‘23. The majority of the event staff was laid off later that year and in December General Manager Jordan Levin announced the cancellation of RTX 2024. He notably cited that the conventions had never been profitable. This was a major red flag to even the staunchest RoosterTeeth fan since the conventions had always been an important way of promoting projects and making deals with other companies.

Remember Red vs. Blue, the show that started all of this? RT continued making it over the 10's, even after RWBY became the primary IP and even after Bungie's Halo transitioned over to 343 After 18 seasons it was finally announced in July ‘23 that the longrunning web show, the longest in American history besides maybe Homestar Runner would end with the following season. I'm not sure if this was the result of RT's imminent closure or not but the RvB finale ended up being a movie instead of a full season, Red vs. Blue: Restoration. This is set to premiere in May of this year making it one of the last RT productions.

Most people considered RT's announcement to be a long overdue mercy kill to the Halo series people once watched on their CRT monitors But it's fitting in the end that Red vs. Blue lasted as long as RoosterTeeth itself.

My favourite quote from the Rooster Teeth subreddit today:

For me personally, Rooster Teeth shutting down feels like the equivalent to an ex-spouse getting killed in an accident.

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

The decision to shut down RoosterTeeth came from Warner Bros Discovery. As far as I know there isn't a specific reason why it was closed down last month other than a simple case of bean counters taking a hard look at the data. Warner Bros itself has been having money issues lately and under the reign of Daddy Zaslav they've been slashing expenses left and right. 2023 saw RoosterTeeth announce that RTX was unprofitable, the end of Achievement Hunter, the end of Red vs. Blue, and the admission RWBY's last two seasons had gone over budget and that the show itself wouldn't have continued without Crunchyroll's support. It's not hard to see why WB didn't let it go on another year.

Everything RT that still exists; Funhaus, Frickface, The RoosterTeeth Podcast (Formerly The Drunk Tank), CRWBY, and whatever else is currently being looked over by WB execs (picture that for a moment ) IPs like RWBY and Gen:LOCK are allegedly being shopped around for potential buyers alongside the podcast and gaming networks.

Worth noting that on April 8th it was announced the Roost Podcast Network (not the same as the regular RoosterTeeth Podcast ) had been sold by WB to Night, a digital talent management company. I think this represents the first sale of a former RT property.

I'll also clarify that March 6th was only the shut down announcement date and that RT is going to continue operating until early May. This might be because Texas law requires employers to give at least 60 day notices before layoffs actually start. Funhaus and Frickface at least will continue until then and the RvB movie is supposedly still coming out.

Late Stage RWBY

RT died with a whimper, and RWBY died with a teenage girl committing suicide because she gave up hope and nobody cared about her, which was very prophetic if you ask me. Salem's goal was the world's longest suicide note, which is fitting because that's what happened to RWBY and RT as a whole.

— /r/rwbycritics

You may be wondering how RWBY was doing throughout all this? As evidenced by the thread quotes RWBY fans had gotten a little unhinged by the time the show's last volume rolled around. The fandom divide was thoroughly entrenched and people started acting like very soy echoes of dramanauts. RWBY became less a show and more a vector for online antics where the terminally online would fling at each other and celebrate if anything happened to the other side Honestly the evolution of the FNDM's "culture" could be its own effortpost but it's also kind of hard to translate for normie comprehension

Regarding the civil war, those hardcore fans rabidly loyal to CRWBY — largely represented by showrunners Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross — are known for having parasocial relationships with crew members not so unlike people who followed specific AH or Funhaus personalities. The writers preferred to interact with them over any unfair and mean spirited critics and certain developments like Blake and Yang being together are accused of being bones of appeasement thrown their way for ratings. The most hardcore CRWBY stans outright hate Monty and basically anyone who left the show's development for any reason because they're not seen as part of current RWBY.

The other half are the heckin chud critics — though really it's about one part one part and two parts but for fantasy waifu slop. These guys haven't liked RWBY in a long time and have been waiting patiently for it to end either out of desire for a reboot or because of pure schadenfreude.

This divide is very serious business in places like Reddit i.e. posting regularly in /r/RWBYcritics grants an automatic ban from /r/RWBY

For those of you mayo scrotes who watch video essays one of more infamous RWBY fandom developments came from a critical video by hbomberguy. Idk who he really is honestly but his three hour video in which he simply points out how disappointing RWBY is/has become set the FNDM on fire and was otherwise good for dramacoin I don't consider this sort of thing to be news but I'm bringing it up because to this day you can really make RWBY weirdos just by reminding them it exists. Any criticism of CRWBY's precious little baby is not allowed

Moistcritikal also apparently made a negative comment about RWBY once though I don't think it was a whole video. He's also on the list

As mentioned earlier CRWBY went through a difficult production period post Covid, but though it took almost two extra years and outside funding to make it happen, they finally did finish Volume 9 as of last year alongside the two Justice League movies that Kang really loved and recommends you watch. As Volume 9 finally ended its Crunchyroll exclusivity and premiered on RT just these past few months, CRWBY also announced they'd wrapped up preproduction on Volume 10 (though they do tend to exaggerate how much they've done at any time) and were just waiting for the green light on funding. When this didn't immediately happen, the poor bastards even started appealing directly to the fans at places like RTX for support

But with the extra content that's come out since Volume 9, there's also evidence CRWBY could see the writing on the walls and that they were preparing Volume 10 as a possible last season though they'd previously claimed to have a 12 Volume roadmap for the entire story.

They were just one Volume short in the end

The Fate of RWBY

This is the first comment on the first thread I clicked on in rwbycritics:

"It's strange, while my countrymen cheer the beast's fall, I feel a strange melancholy, after all these years, what once was filled with majesty and pride, goes out not with a blaze of glory, but a whimper in the dark."

So that's how they're taking it

— @HugeKongson

Obviously RoosterTeeth's shutdown kills RWBY too since this former passion project now costs seven figures a season to produce. The true fate of the IP is entirely in the air though. The legal rights now belong to Warner Bros or one of the other companies under them in the family tree and it remains to be seen what will happen. Meanwhile a spattering of newish RWBY developments have happened since March 6th.

Volume 9's release on RT FIRST still happened as planned. In a rare moment of RT generosity it was announced that all RWBY content would be free on the RoostrTeeth site until closure. (Though this does track with their treatment of FIRST members ) As it wrapped up CRWBY actually released a slightly extended version of the season's epilogue, albeit it took the form of an unfinished animatic.

This leads into RWBY: Beyond, a four episode "storybook anthology" that will represent the last official CRWBY content and otherwise wrap up RoosterTeeth's tenure with the show. It actually premieres today

Unfortunately all the post RWBY shutdown content looks like this since the budget's gone.

But at least there's something since otherwise the below image would be true.

Alas the Justice League movies still represent the last properly animated RWBY content ever made by RoosterTeeth.

So what will happen to RWBY now? It entirely depends on whether WB finds a buyer or not and whether or not they can agree on a price. Unless some exec decides there's a lot of potential in the RWBY x DC stuff I doubt they'll want to make use of the IP especially since they'd have to find new producers.

Remember Dillon Gu and Shane Newville from earlier? After being banished from RoosterTeeth for violating the CRWBY Covenant they went on to have their own animation studio and make videos like the one above. A lot of the studio's work is obviously RWBY inspired.

Dillon Gu has expressed interest in acquiring RWBY but I doubt they have the money Warner Bros will ask for. I'm still bringing it up because all the nerds are hoping for this so it could be a good source of seethe if it doesn't happen that way.

The most likely potential buyer is probably Crunchyroll. RWBY has actually been one of their most popular shows over the years and was fairly popular in Japan for a western series. In fact RWBY was the most watched anime in Japan on Crunchyroll for the 2010's.

For the moment RWBY will remain on Crunchyroll even after the RT website disappears and if nothing else WB will talk to Crunchyroll about renewing that deal or not. It's quite possible Crunchyroll will look into buying the IP though it's not confirmed yet.

If no one buys RWBY then it will remain in the hands of Daddy Zaslav WB is the same company that made a Batgirl and Wile E. Coyote movie and chose not to release them. With the latter WB didn't even negotiate with attempted distributors. They just opened with an unreasonably high offer and refused to respond to counter offers.

So yeah who knows what'll happen to RWBY. I just wanted a fighting game out of it

CLOSING THOUGHTS

They are Austin, Texascels who drank California grade wokism but didn't have ANY of the California chuds or safety rails to rein in their bullshit and quickly alienated their fanbase.

— @KoreanKongKing

They had frickin huge billboard ads up in the heart of Austin overlooking i35 for the lazer team release- probably some of the most expensive in the city. , all of them.

— @Konggles

I've only tangentially followed the fall of Roosterteeth as a podcast I listen to was on their network, but in general I deeply hate how what ten years ago was framed as “independent creators can make things” has become so many levels of frickery.

— /r/hobbydrama

It's their 20th anniversary this year, and literal no one gives a frick. It's absolutely that this company that was pretty well loved on the internet and had a big enough fanbase to support a yearly convention has petered out to a corpse that's being puppeted by media corpos. I remember religious watching up to 2015 and leaving when Ray did. It's telling that Ray even gets brought up anymore going on 8 years since his exit.

— @DiamondKong

I've written three effortposts now so I don't have a lot to say here. Really I'm just waiting to see what happens to RWBY.

It is sad yet interesting to me that RoosterTeeth was in decline for as long as they'd been successful if not longer. No one was surprised to hear they'd be shut down. Most people only reminisced about when they'd been better.

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/3bgfa3/the_blood_gulch_chronicles_versus_the_later/

If you want more info this hobbydrama post, while a little soy, is pretty informative especially regarding the podcasts and how YouTube's policy changes harmed RT over time.

And for you ypipo out there here's a YouTube video essay

This account is private

This user has enabled private mode to cloak their posting history.

— @ProterozoicBussy

ProterozoicBussy wanted me to quote him so I went to his profile on an alt and saw this and anyway I fulfilled my end of the bargain.

Also if any of you dramanauts have RWBY: Grimm Eclipse on Xbox then HMU I still need the four person achievements before the servers maybe go offline.