They shifted over the years. From RvB, to Achievement Hunter, Rage Quit, and Let’s Play, to RWBY, to podcasts. It seems like the current move is just cutting out the non-pod stuff since that’s what is successful right now.
They had alleged abuse. I think part of it was the start up mentality of working long hours and expecting others to do the same even after they had become a stable company.
Some alleged slurs also from people who were a lot more comfortable than they probably should have been with coworkers. At least one of the people alleging slurs also definitely used slurs. May or may not be connected to how comfortable they were saying the types of things they did.
Honestly, that’s kind of scratching the surface. There were a couple predators that were ousted when they were caught. One dude was ousted when he went off the deep end with conspiracy theories and was too crazy to work with. One guy was an alcoholic but got better.
They seemed to gradually get better. But they really seemed to have a new controversy every couple of years.
Ok I’m pretty sure I understand most of who you are talking about, but can you tell me who the conspiracy theorist was?
And with the alcoholic I assume you mean Geoff? It’s funny, because he ultimately became one of the only few people I actually really wanted to listen to in the last 4ish years, I don’t think his sabbatical and ultimate recovery is much of a controversy, more just personal issues that he dealt with. He seemed to be one of the few that really still believed in the company.
Omg you meant Joel. Wow, I can’t believe he had been out for so long I forgot about him.
I thought I had heard that he was problematic when he was drinking. I figured I would at least mention it.
I’m glad he got better though. Once Gus stepped away from the RT Podcast I went and listened to all of ANMA. And now that’s one of only 3 or 4 podcasts I will listen to every episode of.
People on the internet: Oh my god, they were my childhood, I will miss them so much, they were like family and friends whom I loved and talked to me everyday and made me laugh.
People who actually worked on the place: Most toxic environment I’ve ever worked in, got bullied, harassed and physically assaulted by misogynist, racists, sexists hooligans everyday, management encouraged them and frequently joined on.
oh, people on the internet know. The people who don’t know are the ones who disengaged a long time ago. I stopped watching years ago and can’t be bother to keep up with every piece of drama that they put out.
Kovic pranced around naked in the office on cam with a girl he was actively cheating on his wife with.
and Ryan manipulated emotionally vulnerable people into sex to cheat on his wife with. One of which was 17, but iirc she admitted about lying about her age, So while Ryan was a predator, he wasnt a child predator iirc.
These two were just the tips of the iceberg. Roosterteeth has been problematic since damn near the start.
One of their early advertisers was “Alpha Brain”, some sugar pill that was supposed to make you think better to game better. Pure pseudoscience junk.
Much later they started shilling for an online prescription mill to their young audience, and in typical roosterteeth fashion. They got really super pissed off at being called out about it, then had geoff come out and try to twist the valid criticism into an attack on his miraculously convenient Erectile Dysfunction.
They also had MASSIVE issues with bigotry behind the scenes, Which IIRC is why Micah Burton and KDin got the fuck out of dodge. (I strongly suspect that Gavin was one of the worst about this, judging from edits early videos made around him and just my pure supposition, I can totally see him being the kind of person to drop the hard R in casual conversation without warning, and think its a laugh).
Also they spent years exploiting fans for free/low cost labor. Not just at expos and events, but behind the scenes in their animation department.
and anytime there was valid criticism about anything they did, They’d spend an entire post/podcast/etc railing against their “idiot” fans for not knowing better… I think at one point, someone… maybe burnie? told all the old, diehard, complaining fans to fuck off and that the can be replaced with new fans?
Which really turned out well, considering they’ve been floundering for years before the guillotine finally came down.
This is just the shit I can remember. Theres a whole plethora more of bullshit that Roosterteeth has done. Sucks for the behind the scene not-asshole folks to be losing their jobs, but RT deserves its ignominious death.
edit This is all to the best of my recollection, If I have some small details wrong let me know so I can correct.
Aww, Gav’s racist? I hope not, but I can see how someone on staff could be with how quickly Burton came on and left. Unfortunate, I liked her when she was on.
I got no hard evidence, largely cause they edit the shit out of the videos and arent dumb enough to say it in public, but there have been off hand comments referencing gavins awfulness behind scenes and shit and there was one video where they were doing a LOT of editing around what cavin was saying (I think it was an AWHU from a very long time ago, like pre-ryan long ago), that I would 100% put money on the fact that… like I said, he not only says the hard R, he says it with laughter and glee.
and hes probably not the only one, I just think hes the most likely.
They got really super pissed off at being called out about it, then had geoff come out and try to twist the valid criticism into an attack on his miraculously convenient Erectile Dysfunction.
It’s a real bummer that we’ll never get the conclusion to RWBY after 9 volumes. Even if the quality has been on a steady decline since volume 3, and volume 9 itself was a fucking joke, I’d still prefer to see the story wrapped up. I was mostly just in it for Jen Taylor though, so hopefully she does something else awesome.
Man I’m glad I stopped watching after volume 3 then. I remember thinking that the early seasons weren’t great aside from some action sequences, and that maybe once they got the ball rolling they could do the story more justice. But it needed to get better after V3, not worse lol.
Also isn’t who the head of discovery was now the head of the merged company? He probably wants to keep that name but can’t get rid of Warner Bros because of brand recognition
I haven’t actively followed their stuff much at all, especially in the last many years, but this one hurts me. Red VS Blue was such a big part of my childhood into my teenage years, with the first ten seasons having gotten more rewatches by me than any other show out there.
Starting to feel those Blood Gulch Blues. Might marathon the whole series, myself.
Were the seasons past 10 any worth watching? I’d heard some mixed views on the latter seasons, and season 10 ends SO strongly with such a good sense of closure to it, it was genuinely confusing to me when I heard they dropped an 11th season.
Gonna try grabbing a buddy and marathoning through the series. I’ve gushed in another comment, but the series meant a lot to me at a younger age during happier times. Maybe now’s as good a time as any to get some closure and finish watching it all.
Yeah I can’t deny that seasons 6 and 7 were a drag, especially 6. Not as much comedy and it’s overall dryer, but I did appreciate the effort put into them trying to do some actual story telling and world building. One COULD argue the necessity of a goofy internet comedy show having world building, but for me I liked the story enough that I was able to push through the dryness.
Season 8 held much of that focus on story, but made up for it with CGI action scenes that, at least when I last saw them at a younger age, were rad as fuck. They prolly haven’t aged heaps well, but hey, coming from an internet comedy show about a buncha moronic dorks in Halo, it was unexpected and WELL appreciated. Can’t remember how the comedy held up given that it’s been at least a decade since I last saw it, unfortunately.
Seasons 9 and 10 were genuinely pretty well written and enjoyable, in my memory! Lots more of those CGI action scenes, cut in between story bits with the Freelancer project and goofy happenings with the main cast. Season 10 especially had an impact on me at the time, and to this day I still refuse to tell my loved ones goodbye. It’s too final, too certain.
Never saw anything past that. Season 10’s ending was open ended for the Blood Gulch crew, but all the big story beats they’d worked towards over the years had been given the closure they needed. Just felt odd to me that they took that closure and just, kept going. Maybe I’ll finally check the later seasons out.
Whether or not you’d enjoy it I can’t say, I don’t know your preferences and it’s been SO long since I’d last touched the series. I think I’m gonna go marathon the series with a buddy of mine, go on one final trip to Blood Gulch and give a large part of my childhood that kinda closure.
‘Previously On’ from Series 11 is worth a watch. And possibly the episode prior to it if you want context - but the main reason is just because it’s a load of stupid RvB humour and it’s brilliant.
RWBY’s a big enough IP that a bunch of companies will likely be interested. I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney, Paramount, Netflix, Amazon, and Sony (Crunchyroll) all made bids of some kind for it.
I remember watching Red vs. Blue back before it was even on Youtube. Fuck I’m old. That was the era of the internet that, for me, was at its best. Before everything became a collection of solidified super services and people made shows by just moving a character model in Halo around. As others have said, the true end of an era. Also RIP to Monty Oum. Man was an auteur. Horny weirdo, too, but also an auteur.
Damn, I remember watching RvB when it was still just cropped gameplay footage with the reticle visible on the screen. I have the Blu-ray box set of seasons 1-10 and the Chorus Trilogy. After Monty died everything kinda started going downhill. Final nail in the coffin I guess.
I was surprised they were still cranking out episodes. I watched one last year out of boredom. It wasn’t even funny. It was just like… CGI doing CGI stuff.
I stopped for a long while after Adam and during the pandemic and I have to agree. Patricks chemistry with everyone is great, the Ryan lore well runs infinitely deep and they cast in general seems to be having more fun.
It’s a similar kind of content it always was but it’s making me laugh like it used to so I can’t complain.
Brought u this thing with Lawrence, Bruce and KassemG is also pretty excellent.
I stopped watching anything made by their network around the time they started shilling fake boner pills and sweeping scandals under the rug. I never saw RvB but I came in as a fan for a while of Let’s Play and Funhaus, before they acquired it. I even contributed to First for a little while.
They had a lot of momentum in those days, but I think they tried to grow beyond their ability. Most of the new programming they developed was inferior to the lightning-in-a-bottle stuff they were initially built on. They tried to expand their business while hamstrung by their own internal limitations. They did suffer from some bad luck, but really, they mostly self-destructed in slow motion.
It’s hard enough to build an internet company based on algorithms and originating on someone else’s platform. They tried to navigate independently as long as they could, but really, when fans aren’t responding exponentially to your investment, you can either sell out or die right away. Props for twenty years of capitalizing on early internet fame. But to me, this is an overdue death. Basing your brand around being a dick was bound to have a shelf life.
Content creators from the early days when that was a novelty.
Some stuff is legit animation like RWBY, they made the biggest mechinima ever in Red vs Blue, a show made by voicing over video game characters controlled by a player, they made videos showing how to get Xbox achievements called Achievement Hunter, Let’s Play with people just doing fun stuff in video games, and then later podcasts with random stuff like people chatting about current topics RT Podcast, plane crashes in Black Box Down, and Austin in ANMA.
A bunch of other stuff too. But that’s a good summary I think.
I was shocked a couple of months ago when YouTube suddenly decided to randomly throw one of their videos into my autoplay-feed. WTF? They still exist?!
But it get’s worse. It was about Geoff screaming “The haters said we will die so many times! And we made it every time! And we will make it this time, too!” Didn’t go well I guess.
Yeah, I’ve been able to find a post on Twitter as their current situation which isn’t much, unfortunately. I know it’s really shitty to make this about me or even other fans in a similar situation but as someone who stopped watching RT something like 5 years ago when all of the big changes started happening and multiple new hosts I didn’t like, came back when F*ckface took over the Let’s Play channel and started making more of the type of content I used to love so much only for them to get shutdown (and not even know it was coming) sucks so freaking much. Hell, they’ve only just posted the first video of a month’s worth of content. It’s shit like this that makes me absolutely loathe the corpo scum.
deadline.com
Aktywne