RIP: Rooster Teeth, digital content pioneer

[thewayne]

Warner Brothers strikes again, killing lines in hopes of shrinking a massive debt load that doesn't seem to go away. Pity the thought of producing good content that people want to see hasn't occurred to them. This time the victim is Rooster Teeth, the creative geniuses that brought us Red Vs Blue and RWBY, among many other things. Red Vs Blue started up before we had the World Wide Web and was one of the first internet-based animated hits. It was bought up by Microsoft for a while and I believe later released from their grip.

While Rooster Teeth is being shut down and at least 150 people are losing their jobs, Warner is going to try to sell Red Vs Blue and other properties, so there may be some meat to be picked off them bones yet.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/rooster-teeth-shut-down-warner-bros-discovery-1234960682/

Comments

[devilc]

The ATT/Warner merger has been such a fucking hot mess. DC comics has been gutted of just about anybody who knows comics at the top levels and has become a revolving door of useless dudebros.

[thewayne]

That's very unfortunate.  It used to be that DC was my main comics source, now I don't buy comics at all (except for manga collections via Humble Bundle).  They banked too much on expansion and on movies, they thought that any superhero movie would rake in bucks, not realizing that people want a good story.

[disneydream06]

I hadn't heard of Rooster Teeth, but that sucks for Warner Brothers to do that. :o

Disney is trying to trim the fat too, apparently.
They are closing down their Movie Club and they are no longer going to make their own dvds, they sold that to Sony.
Maybe they could make one less box office bomb and keep some of this other stuff. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That goes for all the studios.
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

The thing that actually MADE Rooster Teeth was the Red Vs Blue series.  It was what's known as Machinema, animation based on a game engine.  In this case, the extremely popular science fiction shooter game Halo.  They've made over THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EPISODES! and won numerous awards for the series.  The cool thing about it is each team knows the other team is the enemy, but it's not heavily linked into the story of Halo, it just uses the visuals.  So you don't have to be deeply invested in the game to enjoy it. The big problem that Warner, Disney, et al are having, when you get down to it, is their enslavement to Wall Street, share holders, and quarterly profit.  Also their "Must EXPAND!" mentality.  It's making them buy other companies, frequently for very little reason that makes sense.  They buy companies because the company makes cool stuff, but may be unprofitable, then they're surprised that it doesn't become instantly profitable and continues to cost them money.  Meanwhile, the people who founded that company are sitting pretty on a beach somewhere drinking Pina Coladas and working on their tans, laughing.

[disneydream06]

I do wish Disney would concentrate on Disney. :(

[garote]

Good grief, Red vs. Blue ... that was a crazypants long time ago ... I can't even remember how I discovered it. Some collection of videos sitting on a Hotline server maybe.

I guess all these companies are discovering that the desire of people to consume """ CONTENT """ may eventually decline, if their business model is to open up a larger and larger series of firehoses...

[silveradept]

We knew the writing was on the wall for Rooster Teeth when RWBY went to Crunchyroll, and not just that, but as a premium exclusive. That pretty well said they were hurting for money and trying to find it in whatever way they could. RT has also been in bad straits because at least some of their people were being terrible to other on-air people, and that pretty well hurt the other parts of the studio as well.

I can hope that some of the IP will continue to get made in other places, possibly with better support, but it is the end of a era for RT and for the pioneering things they did in proving to the rest of us that they could make video for the Internet and make it go well.

[thewayne]

I did not know about RWBY going to Crunchyroll, nor about the internal rectal haberdashery.  That's sad.  It is, truly, the end of an era.

[silveradept]

The latest season of RWBY premiered as a Crunchyroll exclusive, even beating out the people who had paid Rooster Teeth money for the opportunity to see episodes before the rest of us. That tells me there were a lot of money issues happening.

The internal rectal haberdashery came out last year or year before, when the talent who had been the victim of all the teasing and transphobia went public about it and there was some people shuffling as a result. It wasn't in the RWBY side, but having hired Vic Mignogna meant he got pitched out fast when his allegations came to light.

Having been eaten by Warner Brothers was also one of those bell tolls, although I think everyone thought WB would treat them a little bit better than they have.

[thewayne]

You'd think with WB's background in cartoons, they'd be a bit favorably disposed to animation studios.