Rooster Tooth is biting the mud after greater than 20 years.
Mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful makes an attempt to promote the unprofitable fandom, gaming and comedy leisure division, is shutting down Rooster Tooth’s operations. RT normal supervisor Jordan Levin introduced the shutdown of Austin-based Rooster Tooth at an all-hands assembly Wednesday and in a memo distributed to employees.
The closure of Rooster Tooth will end in layoffs of its roughly 150 full-time staff and can throw dozens of contractors and content material creators out of labor as properly.
“[I]t’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage,” Levin wrote within the memo, obtained by Selection. “Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.” (Learn the complete memo beneath.)
Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment in talks to promote the rights to sure Rooster Tooth catalog content material and mental property equivalent to the favored anime-style sequence “RWBY” (pictured above), pioneering sci-fi spoof “Pink vs. Blue,” and Michael B. Jordan’s animated mecha sequence “Gen:Lock.” As well as, WBD is looking for to promote the Roost podcast community, with reveals spanning gaming, true crime, fandom, comedy and meals, which in the intervening time will proceed to function.
“Warner Bros. Discovery thanks Rooster Tooth’s groundbreaking creators and companions, and the robust administration group, for his or her a few years of success,” the media firm mentioned in an announcement. “Your passionate and dependable followers are testomony to your achievements.”
Rooster Tooth celebrated its twentieth birthday final yr with the launch of recent logos and a brand new tagline, “Simply Taking part in.” The corporate had cultivated an ardent fanbase and have become an internet-video vacation spot years earlier than the arrival of YouTube. Its first viral video got here with the 2003 debut of “Pink vs. Blue,” an animated comedy sequence that popularized machinima. The corporate’s title was derived from dialogue within the authentic trailer for “Pink vs. Blue” — by which the voiceover narrator is dissed by the subtitler as a “cock chunk.”
Rooster Tooth was based in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola and Joel Heyman. After a number of possession adjustments, it grew to become a part of Warner Bros. Discovery two years in the past. In 2019, then-owner WarnerMedia tapped Levin, former CEO of the WB, as normal supervisor of Rooster Tooth as a part of a reorg by which Hullum (beforehand RT’s CEO), Burns and Ramsey took on new artistic roles on the firm. Burns exited Rooster Tooth in 2020.
In 2014, Rooster Tooth was purchased by Fullscreen, which in flip was purchased by Otter Media (a three way partnership of AT&T and Chernin Group) earlier than Rooster Tooth grew to become a part of WarnerMedia underneath AT&T’s possession. In 2022, Discovery closed the acquisition WarnerMedia to type Warner Bros. Discovery.
Rooster Tooth had operated a subscription video-on-demand service from its earliest days, and in 2016 rebranded the service as First. At its peak, Rooster Tooth’s First had about 225,000 paying members on the top of the recognition of “RWBY” and “Gen:Lock,” however has fallen off to about 60,000 right this moment. Warner Bros. Discovery can be speaking with subscribers inside the subsequent few weeks in regards to the service’s shutdown.
At one level, Rooster Tooth’s employees had ballooned to a headcount of greater than 400. It frequently winnowed its ranks over time in makes an attempt to show the enterprise worthwhile to no avail; Rooster Tooth has operated at a loss for the previous decade. Along with its core content material biz, Rooster Tooth offered merchandise and had run the RTX in-person fan conventions beginning in 2011. Levin just lately introduced that the 2024 RTX can be canceled — and informed employees that the occasion has by no means been worthwhile.
Among the many firm’s controversies, Rooster Tooth in 2022 issued an open assertion of apology for “hateful and hurtful” conduct towards staff over time, coming after a former employees member detailed her experiences of being harassed, underpaid and marginalized on the firm.
Learn Levin’s March 6 memo to employees in regards to the firm’s shutdown:
Pricey Rooster Tooth,
Since our founders created and uploaded their first video on the then-called World Broad Internet in 2003, Rooster Tooth has been a supply of creativity, laughter, and lasting innovation within the wildly unstable media {industry}.
We’ve learn the headlines about industry-wide layoffs and closures, and also you’ve heard me give my perspective and updates on the quickly altering state of media and leisure throughout every of our month-to-month All Arms conferences.
Since inheriting possession and management of Rooster Tooth from AT&T following its acquisition of TimeWarner, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its funding in our firm, content material and neighborhood. Now nevertheless, it’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage.
Please be aware that the Roost group shouldn’t be at the moment impacted by this motion. The Roost Podcast Community will proceed working and fulfilling its obligations whereas WBD evaluates exterior curiosity in buying this rising asset.
Within the coming days and weeks, we can have many inquiries to reply and the chance to work collectively to implement the easiest way to wind issues down for us and our neighborhood. We’re working by what comes subsequent in actual time, and we can be as open, direct, and accessible as potential. Thanks all prematurely in your endurance and assist of each other.
Let’s take a second to have a good time our 21-year contribution to the zeitgeist, advancing creativity and outlasting a lot of our friends from the early days of on-line video and digital-first content material.
TO A CREATIVE LEGACY
From a storage in Buda, TX, to world screens giant and small, our groups of dreamers and doers have launched and grown what made Rooster Tooth stand out: animation, comedy, and gaming. From new types of animated comedy with machinima to numerous viral memes, together with the Immortal Snail (aka Snail Murderer), to a US-born animated sequence embraced by Japan as anime, and record-breaking (on the time) crowdfunded motion pictures. You’ve completed a lot and made goals come true right here. You’ve turned authentic IP into video video games, comedian books, and VTubers. You’ve directed brief movies, mo-cap, and movies. You’ve puppeteered, hosted podcasts, and have constructed a thriving neighborhood that spans the globe. Your creativity is aware of no bounds, and also you’ll proceed contributing considerably to tradition wherever your paths could take you.
TO THOSE WHO COME FIRST
Regardless of passing by many company house owners, Rooster Tooth transcended a media enterprise and was a dynamic motion that formed the bond between communities, creators, and storytelling. Our founders didn’t have a blueprint for a media empire, however they acquired near constructing one alongside a neighborhood that fueled its exceptional development. In its earliest days, RT relied on neighborhood sponsorship by time, {dollars}, and unwavering ardour. Volunteers advanced into employees, and the snowball impact grew, leading to new relationships, marriages, births, and shared experiences which have modified lives.
TO TRAILBLAZING CONTENT CREATION
Our method to content material creation on rising platforms paved the best way for brand new media fashions. We impressed generations of creators throughout streaming, machinima, animation, let’s performs, merch drops, touring, podcasting, and extra. Firms like GameStop, YouTube, Fb, Spotify, and TikTok requested us to collaborate with them of their earliest days as a result of we set an ordinary for what a digital-first model could possibly be. We boldly took our content material past screens and into community-driven experiences.
TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each story reaches its closing pages. Rooster Tooth’s closure isn’t merely an finish; it displays broader enterprise dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, promoting challenges, and the ebb and movement of patronage — all these converging components have led to many closures within the {industry}. Whereas we find out about updates on programming daily, we are going to share our plans for reveals, franchises, partnerships, and merch quickly and share these updates with groups internally and with the neighborhood on RoosterTeeth.com
TO OUR FINAL SEASON
Although not intentional, it’s solely applicable that our final season of “Pink vs. Blue” coincides with us navigating this closure collectively. Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts. Rooster Tooth has made an indelible mark on the media {industry}, and we needs to be so happy with the numerous methods we pioneered a enterprise connecting creators and content material with a devoted neighborhood.
With respect, gratitude, and honest appreciation,
Jordan Levin
Rooster Tooth is biting the mud after greater than 20 years.
Mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful makes an attempt to promote the unprofitable fandom, gaming and comedy leisure division, is shutting down Rooster Tooth’s operations. RT normal supervisor Jordan Levin introduced the shutdown of Austin-based Rooster Tooth at an all-hands assembly Wednesday and in a memo distributed to employees.
The closure of Rooster Tooth will end in layoffs of its roughly 150 full-time staff and can throw dozens of contractors and content material creators out of labor as properly.
“[I]t’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage,” Levin wrote within the memo, obtained by Selection. “Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.” (Learn the complete memo beneath.)
Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment in talks to promote the rights to sure Rooster Tooth catalog content material and mental property equivalent to the favored anime-style sequence “RWBY” (pictured above), pioneering sci-fi spoof “Pink vs. Blue,” and Michael B. Jordan’s animated mecha sequence “Gen:Lock.” As well as, WBD is looking for to promote the Roost podcast community, with reveals spanning gaming, true crime, fandom, comedy and meals, which in the intervening time will proceed to function.
“Warner Bros. Discovery thanks Rooster Tooth’s groundbreaking creators and companions, and the robust administration group, for his or her a few years of success,” the media firm mentioned in an announcement. “Your passionate and dependable followers are testomony to your achievements.”
Rooster Tooth celebrated its twentieth birthday final yr with the launch of recent logos and a brand new tagline, “Simply Taking part in.” The corporate had cultivated an ardent fanbase and have become an internet-video vacation spot years earlier than the arrival of YouTube. Its first viral video got here with the 2003 debut of “Pink vs. Blue,” an animated comedy sequence that popularized machinima. The corporate’s title was derived from dialogue within the authentic trailer for “Pink vs. Blue” — by which the voiceover narrator is dissed by the subtitler as a “cock chunk.”
Rooster Tooth was based in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola and Joel Heyman. After a number of possession adjustments, it grew to become a part of Warner Bros. Discovery two years in the past. In 2019, then-owner WarnerMedia tapped Levin, former CEO of the WB, as normal supervisor of Rooster Tooth as a part of a reorg by which Hullum (beforehand RT’s CEO), Burns and Ramsey took on new artistic roles on the firm. Burns exited Rooster Tooth in 2020.
In 2014, Rooster Tooth was purchased by Fullscreen, which in flip was purchased by Otter Media (a three way partnership of AT&T and Chernin Group) earlier than Rooster Tooth grew to become a part of WarnerMedia underneath AT&T’s possession. In 2022, Discovery closed the acquisition WarnerMedia to type Warner Bros. Discovery.
Rooster Tooth had operated a subscription video-on-demand service from its earliest days, and in 2016 rebranded the service as First. At its peak, Rooster Tooth’s First had about 225,000 paying members on the top of the recognition of “RWBY” and “Gen:Lock,” however has fallen off to about 60,000 right this moment. Warner Bros. Discovery can be speaking with subscribers inside the subsequent few weeks in regards to the service’s shutdown.
At one level, Rooster Tooth’s employees had ballooned to a headcount of greater than 400. It frequently winnowed its ranks over time in makes an attempt to show the enterprise worthwhile to no avail; Rooster Tooth has operated at a loss for the previous decade. Along with its core content material biz, Rooster Tooth offered merchandise and had run the RTX in-person fan conventions beginning in 2011. Levin just lately introduced that the 2024 RTX can be canceled — and informed employees that the occasion has by no means been worthwhile.
Among the many firm’s controversies, Rooster Tooth in 2022 issued an open assertion of apology for “hateful and hurtful” conduct towards staff over time, coming after a former employees member detailed her experiences of being harassed, underpaid and marginalized on the firm.
Learn Levin’s March 6 memo to employees in regards to the firm’s shutdown:
Pricey Rooster Tooth,
Since our founders created and uploaded their first video on the then-called World Broad Internet in 2003, Rooster Tooth has been a supply of creativity, laughter, and lasting innovation within the wildly unstable media {industry}.
We’ve learn the headlines about industry-wide layoffs and closures, and also you’ve heard me give my perspective and updates on the quickly altering state of media and leisure throughout every of our month-to-month All Arms conferences.
Since inheriting possession and management of Rooster Tooth from AT&T following its acquisition of TimeWarner, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its funding in our firm, content material and neighborhood. Now nevertheless, it’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage.
Please be aware that the Roost group shouldn’t be at the moment impacted by this motion. The Roost Podcast Community will proceed working and fulfilling its obligations whereas WBD evaluates exterior curiosity in buying this rising asset.
Within the coming days and weeks, we can have many inquiries to reply and the chance to work collectively to implement the easiest way to wind issues down for us and our neighborhood. We’re working by what comes subsequent in actual time, and we can be as open, direct, and accessible as potential. Thanks all prematurely in your endurance and assist of each other.
Let’s take a second to have a good time our 21-year contribution to the zeitgeist, advancing creativity and outlasting a lot of our friends from the early days of on-line video and digital-first content material.
TO A CREATIVE LEGACY
From a storage in Buda, TX, to world screens giant and small, our groups of dreamers and doers have launched and grown what made Rooster Tooth stand out: animation, comedy, and gaming. From new types of animated comedy with machinima to numerous viral memes, together with the Immortal Snail (aka Snail Murderer), to a US-born animated sequence embraced by Japan as anime, and record-breaking (on the time) crowdfunded motion pictures. You’ve completed a lot and made goals come true right here. You’ve turned authentic IP into video video games, comedian books, and VTubers. You’ve directed brief movies, mo-cap, and movies. You’ve puppeteered, hosted podcasts, and have constructed a thriving neighborhood that spans the globe. Your creativity is aware of no bounds, and also you’ll proceed contributing considerably to tradition wherever your paths could take you.
TO THOSE WHO COME FIRST
Regardless of passing by many company house owners, Rooster Tooth transcended a media enterprise and was a dynamic motion that formed the bond between communities, creators, and storytelling. Our founders didn’t have a blueprint for a media empire, however they acquired near constructing one alongside a neighborhood that fueled its exceptional development. In its earliest days, RT relied on neighborhood sponsorship by time, {dollars}, and unwavering ardour. Volunteers advanced into employees, and the snowball impact grew, leading to new relationships, marriages, births, and shared experiences which have modified lives.
TO TRAILBLAZING CONTENT CREATION
Our method to content material creation on rising platforms paved the best way for brand new media fashions. We impressed generations of creators throughout streaming, machinima, animation, let’s performs, merch drops, touring, podcasting, and extra. Firms like GameStop, YouTube, Fb, Spotify, and TikTok requested us to collaborate with them of their earliest days as a result of we set an ordinary for what a digital-first model could possibly be. We boldly took our content material past screens and into community-driven experiences.
TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each story reaches its closing pages. Rooster Tooth’s closure isn’t merely an finish; it displays broader enterprise dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, promoting challenges, and the ebb and movement of patronage — all these converging components have led to many closures within the {industry}. Whereas we find out about updates on programming daily, we are going to share our plans for reveals, franchises, partnerships, and merch quickly and share these updates with groups internally and with the neighborhood on RoosterTeeth.com
TO OUR FINAL SEASON
Although not intentional, it’s solely applicable that our final season of “Pink vs. Blue” coincides with us navigating this closure collectively. Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts. Rooster Tooth has made an indelible mark on the media {industry}, and we needs to be so happy with the numerous methods we pioneered a enterprise connecting creators and content material with a devoted neighborhood.
With respect, gratitude, and honest appreciation,
Jordan Levin
Rooster Tooth is biting the mud after greater than 20 years.
Mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful makes an attempt to promote the unprofitable fandom, gaming and comedy leisure division, is shutting down Rooster Tooth’s operations. RT normal supervisor Jordan Levin introduced the shutdown of Austin-based Rooster Tooth at an all-hands assembly Wednesday and in a memo distributed to employees.
The closure of Rooster Tooth will end in layoffs of its roughly 150 full-time staff and can throw dozens of contractors and content material creators out of labor as properly.
“[I]t’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage,” Levin wrote within the memo, obtained by Selection. “Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.” (Learn the complete memo beneath.)
Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment in talks to promote the rights to sure Rooster Tooth catalog content material and mental property equivalent to the favored anime-style sequence “RWBY” (pictured above), pioneering sci-fi spoof “Pink vs. Blue,” and Michael B. Jordan’s animated mecha sequence “Gen:Lock.” As well as, WBD is looking for to promote the Roost podcast community, with reveals spanning gaming, true crime, fandom, comedy and meals, which in the intervening time will proceed to function.
“Warner Bros. Discovery thanks Rooster Tooth’s groundbreaking creators and companions, and the robust administration group, for his or her a few years of success,” the media firm mentioned in an announcement. “Your passionate and dependable followers are testomony to your achievements.”
Rooster Tooth celebrated its twentieth birthday final yr with the launch of recent logos and a brand new tagline, “Simply Taking part in.” The corporate had cultivated an ardent fanbase and have become an internet-video vacation spot years earlier than the arrival of YouTube. Its first viral video got here with the 2003 debut of “Pink vs. Blue,” an animated comedy sequence that popularized machinima. The corporate’s title was derived from dialogue within the authentic trailer for “Pink vs. Blue” — by which the voiceover narrator is dissed by the subtitler as a “cock chunk.”
Rooster Tooth was based in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola and Joel Heyman. After a number of possession adjustments, it grew to become a part of Warner Bros. Discovery two years in the past. In 2019, then-owner WarnerMedia tapped Levin, former CEO of the WB, as normal supervisor of Rooster Tooth as a part of a reorg by which Hullum (beforehand RT’s CEO), Burns and Ramsey took on new artistic roles on the firm. Burns exited Rooster Tooth in 2020.
In 2014, Rooster Tooth was purchased by Fullscreen, which in flip was purchased by Otter Media (a three way partnership of AT&T and Chernin Group) earlier than Rooster Tooth grew to become a part of WarnerMedia underneath AT&T’s possession. In 2022, Discovery closed the acquisition WarnerMedia to type Warner Bros. Discovery.
Rooster Tooth had operated a subscription video-on-demand service from its earliest days, and in 2016 rebranded the service as First. At its peak, Rooster Tooth’s First had about 225,000 paying members on the top of the recognition of “RWBY” and “Gen:Lock,” however has fallen off to about 60,000 right this moment. Warner Bros. Discovery can be speaking with subscribers inside the subsequent few weeks in regards to the service’s shutdown.
At one level, Rooster Tooth’s employees had ballooned to a headcount of greater than 400. It frequently winnowed its ranks over time in makes an attempt to show the enterprise worthwhile to no avail; Rooster Tooth has operated at a loss for the previous decade. Along with its core content material biz, Rooster Tooth offered merchandise and had run the RTX in-person fan conventions beginning in 2011. Levin just lately introduced that the 2024 RTX can be canceled — and informed employees that the occasion has by no means been worthwhile.
Among the many firm’s controversies, Rooster Tooth in 2022 issued an open assertion of apology for “hateful and hurtful” conduct towards staff over time, coming after a former employees member detailed her experiences of being harassed, underpaid and marginalized on the firm.
Learn Levin’s March 6 memo to employees in regards to the firm’s shutdown:
Pricey Rooster Tooth,
Since our founders created and uploaded their first video on the then-called World Broad Internet in 2003, Rooster Tooth has been a supply of creativity, laughter, and lasting innovation within the wildly unstable media {industry}.
We’ve learn the headlines about industry-wide layoffs and closures, and also you’ve heard me give my perspective and updates on the quickly altering state of media and leisure throughout every of our month-to-month All Arms conferences.
Since inheriting possession and management of Rooster Tooth from AT&T following its acquisition of TimeWarner, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its funding in our firm, content material and neighborhood. Now nevertheless, it’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage.
Please be aware that the Roost group shouldn’t be at the moment impacted by this motion. The Roost Podcast Community will proceed working and fulfilling its obligations whereas WBD evaluates exterior curiosity in buying this rising asset.
Within the coming days and weeks, we can have many inquiries to reply and the chance to work collectively to implement the easiest way to wind issues down for us and our neighborhood. We’re working by what comes subsequent in actual time, and we can be as open, direct, and accessible as potential. Thanks all prematurely in your endurance and assist of each other.
Let’s take a second to have a good time our 21-year contribution to the zeitgeist, advancing creativity and outlasting a lot of our friends from the early days of on-line video and digital-first content material.
TO A CREATIVE LEGACY
From a storage in Buda, TX, to world screens giant and small, our groups of dreamers and doers have launched and grown what made Rooster Tooth stand out: animation, comedy, and gaming. From new types of animated comedy with machinima to numerous viral memes, together with the Immortal Snail (aka Snail Murderer), to a US-born animated sequence embraced by Japan as anime, and record-breaking (on the time) crowdfunded motion pictures. You’ve completed a lot and made goals come true right here. You’ve turned authentic IP into video video games, comedian books, and VTubers. You’ve directed brief movies, mo-cap, and movies. You’ve puppeteered, hosted podcasts, and have constructed a thriving neighborhood that spans the globe. Your creativity is aware of no bounds, and also you’ll proceed contributing considerably to tradition wherever your paths could take you.
TO THOSE WHO COME FIRST
Regardless of passing by many company house owners, Rooster Tooth transcended a media enterprise and was a dynamic motion that formed the bond between communities, creators, and storytelling. Our founders didn’t have a blueprint for a media empire, however they acquired near constructing one alongside a neighborhood that fueled its exceptional development. In its earliest days, RT relied on neighborhood sponsorship by time, {dollars}, and unwavering ardour. Volunteers advanced into employees, and the snowball impact grew, leading to new relationships, marriages, births, and shared experiences which have modified lives.
TO TRAILBLAZING CONTENT CREATION
Our method to content material creation on rising platforms paved the best way for brand new media fashions. We impressed generations of creators throughout streaming, machinima, animation, let’s performs, merch drops, touring, podcasting, and extra. Firms like GameStop, YouTube, Fb, Spotify, and TikTok requested us to collaborate with them of their earliest days as a result of we set an ordinary for what a digital-first model could possibly be. We boldly took our content material past screens and into community-driven experiences.
TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each story reaches its closing pages. Rooster Tooth’s closure isn’t merely an finish; it displays broader enterprise dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, promoting challenges, and the ebb and movement of patronage — all these converging components have led to many closures within the {industry}. Whereas we find out about updates on programming daily, we are going to share our plans for reveals, franchises, partnerships, and merch quickly and share these updates with groups internally and with the neighborhood on RoosterTeeth.com
TO OUR FINAL SEASON
Although not intentional, it’s solely applicable that our final season of “Pink vs. Blue” coincides with us navigating this closure collectively. Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts. Rooster Tooth has made an indelible mark on the media {industry}, and we needs to be so happy with the numerous methods we pioneered a enterprise connecting creators and content material with a devoted neighborhood.
With respect, gratitude, and honest appreciation,
Jordan Levin
Rooster Tooth is biting the mud after greater than 20 years.
Mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful makes an attempt to promote the unprofitable fandom, gaming and comedy leisure division, is shutting down Rooster Tooth’s operations. RT normal supervisor Jordan Levin introduced the shutdown of Austin-based Rooster Tooth at an all-hands assembly Wednesday and in a memo distributed to employees.
The closure of Rooster Tooth will end in layoffs of its roughly 150 full-time staff and can throw dozens of contractors and content material creators out of labor as properly.
“[I]t’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage,” Levin wrote within the memo, obtained by Selection. “Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.” (Learn the complete memo beneath.)
Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment in talks to promote the rights to sure Rooster Tooth catalog content material and mental property equivalent to the favored anime-style sequence “RWBY” (pictured above), pioneering sci-fi spoof “Pink vs. Blue,” and Michael B. Jordan’s animated mecha sequence “Gen:Lock.” As well as, WBD is looking for to promote the Roost podcast community, with reveals spanning gaming, true crime, fandom, comedy and meals, which in the intervening time will proceed to function.
“Warner Bros. Discovery thanks Rooster Tooth’s groundbreaking creators and companions, and the robust administration group, for his or her a few years of success,” the media firm mentioned in an announcement. “Your passionate and dependable followers are testomony to your achievements.”
Rooster Tooth celebrated its twentieth birthday final yr with the launch of recent logos and a brand new tagline, “Simply Taking part in.” The corporate had cultivated an ardent fanbase and have become an internet-video vacation spot years earlier than the arrival of YouTube. Its first viral video got here with the 2003 debut of “Pink vs. Blue,” an animated comedy sequence that popularized machinima. The corporate’s title was derived from dialogue within the authentic trailer for “Pink vs. Blue” — by which the voiceover narrator is dissed by the subtitler as a “cock chunk.”
Rooster Tooth was based in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola and Joel Heyman. After a number of possession adjustments, it grew to become a part of Warner Bros. Discovery two years in the past. In 2019, then-owner WarnerMedia tapped Levin, former CEO of the WB, as normal supervisor of Rooster Tooth as a part of a reorg by which Hullum (beforehand RT’s CEO), Burns and Ramsey took on new artistic roles on the firm. Burns exited Rooster Tooth in 2020.
In 2014, Rooster Tooth was purchased by Fullscreen, which in flip was purchased by Otter Media (a three way partnership of AT&T and Chernin Group) earlier than Rooster Tooth grew to become a part of WarnerMedia underneath AT&T’s possession. In 2022, Discovery closed the acquisition WarnerMedia to type Warner Bros. Discovery.
Rooster Tooth had operated a subscription video-on-demand service from its earliest days, and in 2016 rebranded the service as First. At its peak, Rooster Tooth’s First had about 225,000 paying members on the top of the recognition of “RWBY” and “Gen:Lock,” however has fallen off to about 60,000 right this moment. Warner Bros. Discovery can be speaking with subscribers inside the subsequent few weeks in regards to the service’s shutdown.
At one level, Rooster Tooth’s employees had ballooned to a headcount of greater than 400. It frequently winnowed its ranks over time in makes an attempt to show the enterprise worthwhile to no avail; Rooster Tooth has operated at a loss for the previous decade. Along with its core content material biz, Rooster Tooth offered merchandise and had run the RTX in-person fan conventions beginning in 2011. Levin just lately introduced that the 2024 RTX can be canceled — and informed employees that the occasion has by no means been worthwhile.
Among the many firm’s controversies, Rooster Tooth in 2022 issued an open assertion of apology for “hateful and hurtful” conduct towards staff over time, coming after a former employees member detailed her experiences of being harassed, underpaid and marginalized on the firm.
Learn Levin’s March 6 memo to employees in regards to the firm’s shutdown:
Pricey Rooster Tooth,
Since our founders created and uploaded their first video on the then-called World Broad Internet in 2003, Rooster Tooth has been a supply of creativity, laughter, and lasting innovation within the wildly unstable media {industry}.
We’ve learn the headlines about industry-wide layoffs and closures, and also you’ve heard me give my perspective and updates on the quickly altering state of media and leisure throughout every of our month-to-month All Arms conferences.
Since inheriting possession and management of Rooster Tooth from AT&T following its acquisition of TimeWarner, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its funding in our firm, content material and neighborhood. Now nevertheless, it’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage.
Please be aware that the Roost group shouldn’t be at the moment impacted by this motion. The Roost Podcast Community will proceed working and fulfilling its obligations whereas WBD evaluates exterior curiosity in buying this rising asset.
Within the coming days and weeks, we can have many inquiries to reply and the chance to work collectively to implement the easiest way to wind issues down for us and our neighborhood. We’re working by what comes subsequent in actual time, and we can be as open, direct, and accessible as potential. Thanks all prematurely in your endurance and assist of each other.
Let’s take a second to have a good time our 21-year contribution to the zeitgeist, advancing creativity and outlasting a lot of our friends from the early days of on-line video and digital-first content material.
TO A CREATIVE LEGACY
From a storage in Buda, TX, to world screens giant and small, our groups of dreamers and doers have launched and grown what made Rooster Tooth stand out: animation, comedy, and gaming. From new types of animated comedy with machinima to numerous viral memes, together with the Immortal Snail (aka Snail Murderer), to a US-born animated sequence embraced by Japan as anime, and record-breaking (on the time) crowdfunded motion pictures. You’ve completed a lot and made goals come true right here. You’ve turned authentic IP into video video games, comedian books, and VTubers. You’ve directed brief movies, mo-cap, and movies. You’ve puppeteered, hosted podcasts, and have constructed a thriving neighborhood that spans the globe. Your creativity is aware of no bounds, and also you’ll proceed contributing considerably to tradition wherever your paths could take you.
TO THOSE WHO COME FIRST
Regardless of passing by many company house owners, Rooster Tooth transcended a media enterprise and was a dynamic motion that formed the bond between communities, creators, and storytelling. Our founders didn’t have a blueprint for a media empire, however they acquired near constructing one alongside a neighborhood that fueled its exceptional development. In its earliest days, RT relied on neighborhood sponsorship by time, {dollars}, and unwavering ardour. Volunteers advanced into employees, and the snowball impact grew, leading to new relationships, marriages, births, and shared experiences which have modified lives.
TO TRAILBLAZING CONTENT CREATION
Our method to content material creation on rising platforms paved the best way for brand new media fashions. We impressed generations of creators throughout streaming, machinima, animation, let’s performs, merch drops, touring, podcasting, and extra. Firms like GameStop, YouTube, Fb, Spotify, and TikTok requested us to collaborate with them of their earliest days as a result of we set an ordinary for what a digital-first model could possibly be. We boldly took our content material past screens and into community-driven experiences.
TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each story reaches its closing pages. Rooster Tooth’s closure isn’t merely an finish; it displays broader enterprise dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, promoting challenges, and the ebb and movement of patronage — all these converging components have led to many closures within the {industry}. Whereas we find out about updates on programming daily, we are going to share our plans for reveals, franchises, partnerships, and merch quickly and share these updates with groups internally and with the neighborhood on RoosterTeeth.com
TO OUR FINAL SEASON
Although not intentional, it’s solely applicable that our final season of “Pink vs. Blue” coincides with us navigating this closure collectively. Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts. Rooster Tooth has made an indelible mark on the media {industry}, and we needs to be so happy with the numerous methods we pioneered a enterprise connecting creators and content material with a devoted neighborhood.
With respect, gratitude, and honest appreciation,
Jordan Levin
Rooster Tooth is biting the mud after greater than 20 years.
Mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful makes an attempt to promote the unprofitable fandom, gaming and comedy leisure division, is shutting down Rooster Tooth’s operations. RT normal supervisor Jordan Levin introduced the shutdown of Austin-based Rooster Tooth at an all-hands assembly Wednesday and in a memo distributed to employees.
The closure of Rooster Tooth will end in layoffs of its roughly 150 full-time staff and can throw dozens of contractors and content material creators out of labor as properly.
“[I]t’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage,” Levin wrote within the memo, obtained by Selection. “Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.” (Learn the complete memo beneath.)
Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment in talks to promote the rights to sure Rooster Tooth catalog content material and mental property equivalent to the favored anime-style sequence “RWBY” (pictured above), pioneering sci-fi spoof “Pink vs. Blue,” and Michael B. Jordan’s animated mecha sequence “Gen:Lock.” As well as, WBD is looking for to promote the Roost podcast community, with reveals spanning gaming, true crime, fandom, comedy and meals, which in the intervening time will proceed to function.
“Warner Bros. Discovery thanks Rooster Tooth’s groundbreaking creators and companions, and the robust administration group, for his or her a few years of success,” the media firm mentioned in an announcement. “Your passionate and dependable followers are testomony to your achievements.”
Rooster Tooth celebrated its twentieth birthday final yr with the launch of recent logos and a brand new tagline, “Simply Taking part in.” The corporate had cultivated an ardent fanbase and have become an internet-video vacation spot years earlier than the arrival of YouTube. Its first viral video got here with the 2003 debut of “Pink vs. Blue,” an animated comedy sequence that popularized machinima. The corporate’s title was derived from dialogue within the authentic trailer for “Pink vs. Blue” — by which the voiceover narrator is dissed by the subtitler as a “cock chunk.”
Rooster Tooth was based in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola and Joel Heyman. After a number of possession adjustments, it grew to become a part of Warner Bros. Discovery two years in the past. In 2019, then-owner WarnerMedia tapped Levin, former CEO of the WB, as normal supervisor of Rooster Tooth as a part of a reorg by which Hullum (beforehand RT’s CEO), Burns and Ramsey took on new artistic roles on the firm. Burns exited Rooster Tooth in 2020.
In 2014, Rooster Tooth was purchased by Fullscreen, which in flip was purchased by Otter Media (a three way partnership of AT&T and Chernin Group) earlier than Rooster Tooth grew to become a part of WarnerMedia underneath AT&T’s possession. In 2022, Discovery closed the acquisition WarnerMedia to type Warner Bros. Discovery.
Rooster Tooth had operated a subscription video-on-demand service from its earliest days, and in 2016 rebranded the service as First. At its peak, Rooster Tooth’s First had about 225,000 paying members on the top of the recognition of “RWBY” and “Gen:Lock,” however has fallen off to about 60,000 right this moment. Warner Bros. Discovery can be speaking with subscribers inside the subsequent few weeks in regards to the service’s shutdown.
At one level, Rooster Tooth’s employees had ballooned to a headcount of greater than 400. It frequently winnowed its ranks over time in makes an attempt to show the enterprise worthwhile to no avail; Rooster Tooth has operated at a loss for the previous decade. Along with its core content material biz, Rooster Tooth offered merchandise and had run the RTX in-person fan conventions beginning in 2011. Levin just lately introduced that the 2024 RTX can be canceled — and informed employees that the occasion has by no means been worthwhile.
Among the many firm’s controversies, Rooster Tooth in 2022 issued an open assertion of apology for “hateful and hurtful” conduct towards staff over time, coming after a former employees member detailed her experiences of being harassed, underpaid and marginalized on the firm.
Learn Levin’s March 6 memo to employees in regards to the firm’s shutdown:
Pricey Rooster Tooth,
Since our founders created and uploaded their first video on the then-called World Broad Internet in 2003, Rooster Tooth has been a supply of creativity, laughter, and lasting innovation within the wildly unstable media {industry}.
We’ve learn the headlines about industry-wide layoffs and closures, and also you’ve heard me give my perspective and updates on the quickly altering state of media and leisure throughout every of our month-to-month All Arms conferences.
Since inheriting possession and management of Rooster Tooth from AT&T following its acquisition of TimeWarner, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its funding in our firm, content material and neighborhood. Now nevertheless, it’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage.
Please be aware that the Roost group shouldn’t be at the moment impacted by this motion. The Roost Podcast Community will proceed working and fulfilling its obligations whereas WBD evaluates exterior curiosity in buying this rising asset.
Within the coming days and weeks, we can have many inquiries to reply and the chance to work collectively to implement the easiest way to wind issues down for us and our neighborhood. We’re working by what comes subsequent in actual time, and we can be as open, direct, and accessible as potential. Thanks all prematurely in your endurance and assist of each other.
Let’s take a second to have a good time our 21-year contribution to the zeitgeist, advancing creativity and outlasting a lot of our friends from the early days of on-line video and digital-first content material.
TO A CREATIVE LEGACY
From a storage in Buda, TX, to world screens giant and small, our groups of dreamers and doers have launched and grown what made Rooster Tooth stand out: animation, comedy, and gaming. From new types of animated comedy with machinima to numerous viral memes, together with the Immortal Snail (aka Snail Murderer), to a US-born animated sequence embraced by Japan as anime, and record-breaking (on the time) crowdfunded motion pictures. You’ve completed a lot and made goals come true right here. You’ve turned authentic IP into video video games, comedian books, and VTubers. You’ve directed brief movies, mo-cap, and movies. You’ve puppeteered, hosted podcasts, and have constructed a thriving neighborhood that spans the globe. Your creativity is aware of no bounds, and also you’ll proceed contributing considerably to tradition wherever your paths could take you.
TO THOSE WHO COME FIRST
Regardless of passing by many company house owners, Rooster Tooth transcended a media enterprise and was a dynamic motion that formed the bond between communities, creators, and storytelling. Our founders didn’t have a blueprint for a media empire, however they acquired near constructing one alongside a neighborhood that fueled its exceptional development. In its earliest days, RT relied on neighborhood sponsorship by time, {dollars}, and unwavering ardour. Volunteers advanced into employees, and the snowball impact grew, leading to new relationships, marriages, births, and shared experiences which have modified lives.
TO TRAILBLAZING CONTENT CREATION
Our method to content material creation on rising platforms paved the best way for brand new media fashions. We impressed generations of creators throughout streaming, machinima, animation, let’s performs, merch drops, touring, podcasting, and extra. Firms like GameStop, YouTube, Fb, Spotify, and TikTok requested us to collaborate with them of their earliest days as a result of we set an ordinary for what a digital-first model could possibly be. We boldly took our content material past screens and into community-driven experiences.
TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each story reaches its closing pages. Rooster Tooth’s closure isn’t merely an finish; it displays broader enterprise dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, promoting challenges, and the ebb and movement of patronage — all these converging components have led to many closures within the {industry}. Whereas we find out about updates on programming daily, we are going to share our plans for reveals, franchises, partnerships, and merch quickly and share these updates with groups internally and with the neighborhood on RoosterTeeth.com
TO OUR FINAL SEASON
Although not intentional, it’s solely applicable that our final season of “Pink vs. Blue” coincides with us navigating this closure collectively. Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts. Rooster Tooth has made an indelible mark on the media {industry}, and we needs to be so happy with the numerous methods we pioneered a enterprise connecting creators and content material with a devoted neighborhood.
With respect, gratitude, and honest appreciation,
Jordan Levin
Rooster Tooth is biting the mud after greater than 20 years.
Mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful makes an attempt to promote the unprofitable fandom, gaming and comedy leisure division, is shutting down Rooster Tooth’s operations. RT normal supervisor Jordan Levin introduced the shutdown of Austin-based Rooster Tooth at an all-hands assembly Wednesday and in a memo distributed to employees.
The closure of Rooster Tooth will end in layoffs of its roughly 150 full-time staff and can throw dozens of contractors and content material creators out of labor as properly.
“[I]t’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage,” Levin wrote within the memo, obtained by Selection. “Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.” (Learn the complete memo beneath.)
Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment in talks to promote the rights to sure Rooster Tooth catalog content material and mental property equivalent to the favored anime-style sequence “RWBY” (pictured above), pioneering sci-fi spoof “Pink vs. Blue,” and Michael B. Jordan’s animated mecha sequence “Gen:Lock.” As well as, WBD is looking for to promote the Roost podcast community, with reveals spanning gaming, true crime, fandom, comedy and meals, which in the intervening time will proceed to function.
“Warner Bros. Discovery thanks Rooster Tooth’s groundbreaking creators and companions, and the robust administration group, for his or her a few years of success,” the media firm mentioned in an announcement. “Your passionate and dependable followers are testomony to your achievements.”
Rooster Tooth celebrated its twentieth birthday final yr with the launch of recent logos and a brand new tagline, “Simply Taking part in.” The corporate had cultivated an ardent fanbase and have become an internet-video vacation spot years earlier than the arrival of YouTube. Its first viral video got here with the 2003 debut of “Pink vs. Blue,” an animated comedy sequence that popularized machinima. The corporate’s title was derived from dialogue within the authentic trailer for “Pink vs. Blue” — by which the voiceover narrator is dissed by the subtitler as a “cock chunk.”
Rooster Tooth was based in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola and Joel Heyman. After a number of possession adjustments, it grew to become a part of Warner Bros. Discovery two years in the past. In 2019, then-owner WarnerMedia tapped Levin, former CEO of the WB, as normal supervisor of Rooster Tooth as a part of a reorg by which Hullum (beforehand RT’s CEO), Burns and Ramsey took on new artistic roles on the firm. Burns exited Rooster Tooth in 2020.
In 2014, Rooster Tooth was purchased by Fullscreen, which in flip was purchased by Otter Media (a three way partnership of AT&T and Chernin Group) earlier than Rooster Tooth grew to become a part of WarnerMedia underneath AT&T’s possession. In 2022, Discovery closed the acquisition WarnerMedia to type Warner Bros. Discovery.
Rooster Tooth had operated a subscription video-on-demand service from its earliest days, and in 2016 rebranded the service as First. At its peak, Rooster Tooth’s First had about 225,000 paying members on the top of the recognition of “RWBY” and “Gen:Lock,” however has fallen off to about 60,000 right this moment. Warner Bros. Discovery can be speaking with subscribers inside the subsequent few weeks in regards to the service’s shutdown.
At one level, Rooster Tooth’s employees had ballooned to a headcount of greater than 400. It frequently winnowed its ranks over time in makes an attempt to show the enterprise worthwhile to no avail; Rooster Tooth has operated at a loss for the previous decade. Along with its core content material biz, Rooster Tooth offered merchandise and had run the RTX in-person fan conventions beginning in 2011. Levin just lately introduced that the 2024 RTX can be canceled — and informed employees that the occasion has by no means been worthwhile.
Among the many firm’s controversies, Rooster Tooth in 2022 issued an open assertion of apology for “hateful and hurtful” conduct towards staff over time, coming after a former employees member detailed her experiences of being harassed, underpaid and marginalized on the firm.
Learn Levin’s March 6 memo to employees in regards to the firm’s shutdown:
Pricey Rooster Tooth,
Since our founders created and uploaded their first video on the then-called World Broad Internet in 2003, Rooster Tooth has been a supply of creativity, laughter, and lasting innovation within the wildly unstable media {industry}.
We’ve learn the headlines about industry-wide layoffs and closures, and also you’ve heard me give my perspective and updates on the quickly altering state of media and leisure throughout every of our month-to-month All Arms conferences.
Since inheriting possession and management of Rooster Tooth from AT&T following its acquisition of TimeWarner, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its funding in our firm, content material and neighborhood. Now nevertheless, it’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage.
Please be aware that the Roost group shouldn’t be at the moment impacted by this motion. The Roost Podcast Community will proceed working and fulfilling its obligations whereas WBD evaluates exterior curiosity in buying this rising asset.
Within the coming days and weeks, we can have many inquiries to reply and the chance to work collectively to implement the easiest way to wind issues down for us and our neighborhood. We’re working by what comes subsequent in actual time, and we can be as open, direct, and accessible as potential. Thanks all prematurely in your endurance and assist of each other.
Let’s take a second to have a good time our 21-year contribution to the zeitgeist, advancing creativity and outlasting a lot of our friends from the early days of on-line video and digital-first content material.
TO A CREATIVE LEGACY
From a storage in Buda, TX, to world screens giant and small, our groups of dreamers and doers have launched and grown what made Rooster Tooth stand out: animation, comedy, and gaming. From new types of animated comedy with machinima to numerous viral memes, together with the Immortal Snail (aka Snail Murderer), to a US-born animated sequence embraced by Japan as anime, and record-breaking (on the time) crowdfunded motion pictures. You’ve completed a lot and made goals come true right here. You’ve turned authentic IP into video video games, comedian books, and VTubers. You’ve directed brief movies, mo-cap, and movies. You’ve puppeteered, hosted podcasts, and have constructed a thriving neighborhood that spans the globe. Your creativity is aware of no bounds, and also you’ll proceed contributing considerably to tradition wherever your paths could take you.
TO THOSE WHO COME FIRST
Regardless of passing by many company house owners, Rooster Tooth transcended a media enterprise and was a dynamic motion that formed the bond between communities, creators, and storytelling. Our founders didn’t have a blueprint for a media empire, however they acquired near constructing one alongside a neighborhood that fueled its exceptional development. In its earliest days, RT relied on neighborhood sponsorship by time, {dollars}, and unwavering ardour. Volunteers advanced into employees, and the snowball impact grew, leading to new relationships, marriages, births, and shared experiences which have modified lives.
TO TRAILBLAZING CONTENT CREATION
Our method to content material creation on rising platforms paved the best way for brand new media fashions. We impressed generations of creators throughout streaming, machinima, animation, let’s performs, merch drops, touring, podcasting, and extra. Firms like GameStop, YouTube, Fb, Spotify, and TikTok requested us to collaborate with them of their earliest days as a result of we set an ordinary for what a digital-first model could possibly be. We boldly took our content material past screens and into community-driven experiences.
TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each story reaches its closing pages. Rooster Tooth’s closure isn’t merely an finish; it displays broader enterprise dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, promoting challenges, and the ebb and movement of patronage — all these converging components have led to many closures within the {industry}. Whereas we find out about updates on programming daily, we are going to share our plans for reveals, franchises, partnerships, and merch quickly and share these updates with groups internally and with the neighborhood on RoosterTeeth.com
TO OUR FINAL SEASON
Although not intentional, it’s solely applicable that our final season of “Pink vs. Blue” coincides with us navigating this closure collectively. Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts. Rooster Tooth has made an indelible mark on the media {industry}, and we needs to be so happy with the numerous methods we pioneered a enterprise connecting creators and content material with a devoted neighborhood.
With respect, gratitude, and honest appreciation,
Jordan Levin
Rooster Tooth is biting the mud after greater than 20 years.
Mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful makes an attempt to promote the unprofitable fandom, gaming and comedy leisure division, is shutting down Rooster Tooth’s operations. RT normal supervisor Jordan Levin introduced the shutdown of Austin-based Rooster Tooth at an all-hands assembly Wednesday and in a memo distributed to employees.
The closure of Rooster Tooth will end in layoffs of its roughly 150 full-time staff and can throw dozens of contractors and content material creators out of labor as properly.
“[I]t’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage,” Levin wrote within the memo, obtained by Selection. “Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.” (Learn the complete memo beneath.)
Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment in talks to promote the rights to sure Rooster Tooth catalog content material and mental property equivalent to the favored anime-style sequence “RWBY” (pictured above), pioneering sci-fi spoof “Pink vs. Blue,” and Michael B. Jordan’s animated mecha sequence “Gen:Lock.” As well as, WBD is looking for to promote the Roost podcast community, with reveals spanning gaming, true crime, fandom, comedy and meals, which in the intervening time will proceed to function.
“Warner Bros. Discovery thanks Rooster Tooth’s groundbreaking creators and companions, and the robust administration group, for his or her a few years of success,” the media firm mentioned in an announcement. “Your passionate and dependable followers are testomony to your achievements.”
Rooster Tooth celebrated its twentieth birthday final yr with the launch of recent logos and a brand new tagline, “Simply Taking part in.” The corporate had cultivated an ardent fanbase and have become an internet-video vacation spot years earlier than the arrival of YouTube. Its first viral video got here with the 2003 debut of “Pink vs. Blue,” an animated comedy sequence that popularized machinima. The corporate’s title was derived from dialogue within the authentic trailer for “Pink vs. Blue” — by which the voiceover narrator is dissed by the subtitler as a “cock chunk.”
Rooster Tooth was based in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola and Joel Heyman. After a number of possession adjustments, it grew to become a part of Warner Bros. Discovery two years in the past. In 2019, then-owner WarnerMedia tapped Levin, former CEO of the WB, as normal supervisor of Rooster Tooth as a part of a reorg by which Hullum (beforehand RT’s CEO), Burns and Ramsey took on new artistic roles on the firm. Burns exited Rooster Tooth in 2020.
In 2014, Rooster Tooth was purchased by Fullscreen, which in flip was purchased by Otter Media (a three way partnership of AT&T and Chernin Group) earlier than Rooster Tooth grew to become a part of WarnerMedia underneath AT&T’s possession. In 2022, Discovery closed the acquisition WarnerMedia to type Warner Bros. Discovery.
Rooster Tooth had operated a subscription video-on-demand service from its earliest days, and in 2016 rebranded the service as First. At its peak, Rooster Tooth’s First had about 225,000 paying members on the top of the recognition of “RWBY” and “Gen:Lock,” however has fallen off to about 60,000 right this moment. Warner Bros. Discovery can be speaking with subscribers inside the subsequent few weeks in regards to the service’s shutdown.
At one level, Rooster Tooth’s employees had ballooned to a headcount of greater than 400. It frequently winnowed its ranks over time in makes an attempt to show the enterprise worthwhile to no avail; Rooster Tooth has operated at a loss for the previous decade. Along with its core content material biz, Rooster Tooth offered merchandise and had run the RTX in-person fan conventions beginning in 2011. Levin just lately introduced that the 2024 RTX can be canceled — and informed employees that the occasion has by no means been worthwhile.
Among the many firm’s controversies, Rooster Tooth in 2022 issued an open assertion of apology for “hateful and hurtful” conduct towards staff over time, coming after a former employees member detailed her experiences of being harassed, underpaid and marginalized on the firm.
Learn Levin’s March 6 memo to employees in regards to the firm’s shutdown:
Pricey Rooster Tooth,
Since our founders created and uploaded their first video on the then-called World Broad Internet in 2003, Rooster Tooth has been a supply of creativity, laughter, and lasting innovation within the wildly unstable media {industry}.
We’ve learn the headlines about industry-wide layoffs and closures, and also you’ve heard me give my perspective and updates on the quickly altering state of media and leisure throughout every of our month-to-month All Arms conferences.
Since inheriting possession and management of Rooster Tooth from AT&T following its acquisition of TimeWarner, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its funding in our firm, content material and neighborhood. Now nevertheless, it’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage.
Please be aware that the Roost group shouldn’t be at the moment impacted by this motion. The Roost Podcast Community will proceed working and fulfilling its obligations whereas WBD evaluates exterior curiosity in buying this rising asset.
Within the coming days and weeks, we can have many inquiries to reply and the chance to work collectively to implement the easiest way to wind issues down for us and our neighborhood. We’re working by what comes subsequent in actual time, and we can be as open, direct, and accessible as potential. Thanks all prematurely in your endurance and assist of each other.
Let’s take a second to have a good time our 21-year contribution to the zeitgeist, advancing creativity and outlasting a lot of our friends from the early days of on-line video and digital-first content material.
TO A CREATIVE LEGACY
From a storage in Buda, TX, to world screens giant and small, our groups of dreamers and doers have launched and grown what made Rooster Tooth stand out: animation, comedy, and gaming. From new types of animated comedy with machinima to numerous viral memes, together with the Immortal Snail (aka Snail Murderer), to a US-born animated sequence embraced by Japan as anime, and record-breaking (on the time) crowdfunded motion pictures. You’ve completed a lot and made goals come true right here. You’ve turned authentic IP into video video games, comedian books, and VTubers. You’ve directed brief movies, mo-cap, and movies. You’ve puppeteered, hosted podcasts, and have constructed a thriving neighborhood that spans the globe. Your creativity is aware of no bounds, and also you’ll proceed contributing considerably to tradition wherever your paths could take you.
TO THOSE WHO COME FIRST
Regardless of passing by many company house owners, Rooster Tooth transcended a media enterprise and was a dynamic motion that formed the bond between communities, creators, and storytelling. Our founders didn’t have a blueprint for a media empire, however they acquired near constructing one alongside a neighborhood that fueled its exceptional development. In its earliest days, RT relied on neighborhood sponsorship by time, {dollars}, and unwavering ardour. Volunteers advanced into employees, and the snowball impact grew, leading to new relationships, marriages, births, and shared experiences which have modified lives.
TO TRAILBLAZING CONTENT CREATION
Our method to content material creation on rising platforms paved the best way for brand new media fashions. We impressed generations of creators throughout streaming, machinima, animation, let’s performs, merch drops, touring, podcasting, and extra. Firms like GameStop, YouTube, Fb, Spotify, and TikTok requested us to collaborate with them of their earliest days as a result of we set an ordinary for what a digital-first model could possibly be. We boldly took our content material past screens and into community-driven experiences.
TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each story reaches its closing pages. Rooster Tooth’s closure isn’t merely an finish; it displays broader enterprise dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, promoting challenges, and the ebb and movement of patronage — all these converging components have led to many closures within the {industry}. Whereas we find out about updates on programming daily, we are going to share our plans for reveals, franchises, partnerships, and merch quickly and share these updates with groups internally and with the neighborhood on RoosterTeeth.com
TO OUR FINAL SEASON
Although not intentional, it’s solely applicable that our final season of “Pink vs. Blue” coincides with us navigating this closure collectively. Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts. Rooster Tooth has made an indelible mark on the media {industry}, and we needs to be so happy with the numerous methods we pioneered a enterprise connecting creators and content material with a devoted neighborhood.
With respect, gratitude, and honest appreciation,
Jordan Levin
Rooster Tooth is biting the mud after greater than 20 years.
Mother or father firm Warner Bros. Discovery, after unsuccessful makes an attempt to promote the unprofitable fandom, gaming and comedy leisure division, is shutting down Rooster Tooth’s operations. RT normal supervisor Jordan Levin introduced the shutdown of Austin-based Rooster Tooth at an all-hands assembly Wednesday and in a memo distributed to employees.
The closure of Rooster Tooth will end in layoffs of its roughly 150 full-time staff and can throw dozens of contractors and content material creators out of labor as properly.
“[I]t’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage,” Levin wrote within the memo, obtained by Selection. “Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.” (Learn the complete memo beneath.)
Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment in talks to promote the rights to sure Rooster Tooth catalog content material and mental property equivalent to the favored anime-style sequence “RWBY” (pictured above), pioneering sci-fi spoof “Pink vs. Blue,” and Michael B. Jordan’s animated mecha sequence “Gen:Lock.” As well as, WBD is looking for to promote the Roost podcast community, with reveals spanning gaming, true crime, fandom, comedy and meals, which in the intervening time will proceed to function.
“Warner Bros. Discovery thanks Rooster Tooth’s groundbreaking creators and companions, and the robust administration group, for his or her a few years of success,” the media firm mentioned in an announcement. “Your passionate and dependable followers are testomony to your achievements.”
Rooster Tooth celebrated its twentieth birthday final yr with the launch of recent logos and a brand new tagline, “Simply Taking part in.” The corporate had cultivated an ardent fanbase and have become an internet-video vacation spot years earlier than the arrival of YouTube. Its first viral video got here with the 2003 debut of “Pink vs. Blue,” an animated comedy sequence that popularized machinima. The corporate’s title was derived from dialogue within the authentic trailer for “Pink vs. Blue” — by which the voiceover narrator is dissed by the subtitler as a “cock chunk.”
Rooster Tooth was based in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola and Joel Heyman. After a number of possession adjustments, it grew to become a part of Warner Bros. Discovery two years in the past. In 2019, then-owner WarnerMedia tapped Levin, former CEO of the WB, as normal supervisor of Rooster Tooth as a part of a reorg by which Hullum (beforehand RT’s CEO), Burns and Ramsey took on new artistic roles on the firm. Burns exited Rooster Tooth in 2020.
In 2014, Rooster Tooth was purchased by Fullscreen, which in flip was purchased by Otter Media (a three way partnership of AT&T and Chernin Group) earlier than Rooster Tooth grew to become a part of WarnerMedia underneath AT&T’s possession. In 2022, Discovery closed the acquisition WarnerMedia to type Warner Bros. Discovery.
Rooster Tooth had operated a subscription video-on-demand service from its earliest days, and in 2016 rebranded the service as First. At its peak, Rooster Tooth’s First had about 225,000 paying members on the top of the recognition of “RWBY” and “Gen:Lock,” however has fallen off to about 60,000 right this moment. Warner Bros. Discovery can be speaking with subscribers inside the subsequent few weeks in regards to the service’s shutdown.
At one level, Rooster Tooth’s employees had ballooned to a headcount of greater than 400. It frequently winnowed its ranks over time in makes an attempt to show the enterprise worthwhile to no avail; Rooster Tooth has operated at a loss for the previous decade. Along with its core content material biz, Rooster Tooth offered merchandise and had run the RTX in-person fan conventions beginning in 2011. Levin just lately introduced that the 2024 RTX can be canceled — and informed employees that the occasion has by no means been worthwhile.
Among the many firm’s controversies, Rooster Tooth in 2022 issued an open assertion of apology for “hateful and hurtful” conduct towards staff over time, coming after a former employees member detailed her experiences of being harassed, underpaid and marginalized on the firm.
Learn Levin’s March 6 memo to employees in regards to the firm’s shutdown:
Pricey Rooster Tooth,
Since our founders created and uploaded their first video on the then-called World Broad Internet in 2003, Rooster Tooth has been a supply of creativity, laughter, and lasting innovation within the wildly unstable media {industry}.
We’ve learn the headlines about industry-wide layoffs and closures, and also you’ve heard me give my perspective and updates on the quickly altering state of media and leisure throughout every of our month-to-month All Arms conferences.
Since inheriting possession and management of Rooster Tooth from AT&T following its acquisition of TimeWarner, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its funding in our firm, content material and neighborhood. Now nevertheless, it’s with a heavy coronary heart I announce that Rooster Tooth is shutting down because of challenges dealing with digital media ensuing from elementary shifts in client habits and monetization throughout platforms, promoting, and patronage.
Please be aware that the Roost group shouldn’t be at the moment impacted by this motion. The Roost Podcast Community will proceed working and fulfilling its obligations whereas WBD evaluates exterior curiosity in buying this rising asset.
Within the coming days and weeks, we can have many inquiries to reply and the chance to work collectively to implement the easiest way to wind issues down for us and our neighborhood. We’re working by what comes subsequent in actual time, and we can be as open, direct, and accessible as potential. Thanks all prematurely in your endurance and assist of each other.
Let’s take a second to have a good time our 21-year contribution to the zeitgeist, advancing creativity and outlasting a lot of our friends from the early days of on-line video and digital-first content material.
TO A CREATIVE LEGACY
From a storage in Buda, TX, to world screens giant and small, our groups of dreamers and doers have launched and grown what made Rooster Tooth stand out: animation, comedy, and gaming. From new types of animated comedy with machinima to numerous viral memes, together with the Immortal Snail (aka Snail Murderer), to a US-born animated sequence embraced by Japan as anime, and record-breaking (on the time) crowdfunded motion pictures. You’ve completed a lot and made goals come true right here. You’ve turned authentic IP into video video games, comedian books, and VTubers. You’ve directed brief movies, mo-cap, and movies. You’ve puppeteered, hosted podcasts, and have constructed a thriving neighborhood that spans the globe. Your creativity is aware of no bounds, and also you’ll proceed contributing considerably to tradition wherever your paths could take you.
TO THOSE WHO COME FIRST
Regardless of passing by many company house owners, Rooster Tooth transcended a media enterprise and was a dynamic motion that formed the bond between communities, creators, and storytelling. Our founders didn’t have a blueprint for a media empire, however they acquired near constructing one alongside a neighborhood that fueled its exceptional development. In its earliest days, RT relied on neighborhood sponsorship by time, {dollars}, and unwavering ardour. Volunteers advanced into employees, and the snowball impact grew, leading to new relationships, marriages, births, and shared experiences which have modified lives.
TO TRAILBLAZING CONTENT CREATION
Our method to content material creation on rising platforms paved the best way for brand new media fashions. We impressed generations of creators throughout streaming, machinima, animation, let’s performs, merch drops, touring, podcasting, and extra. Firms like GameStop, YouTube, Fb, Spotify, and TikTok requested us to collaborate with them of their earliest days as a result of we set an ordinary for what a digital-first model could possibly be. We boldly took our content material past screens and into community-driven experiences.
TO A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each story reaches its closing pages. Rooster Tooth’s closure isn’t merely an finish; it displays broader enterprise dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, promoting challenges, and the ebb and movement of patronage — all these converging components have led to many closures within the {industry}. Whereas we find out about updates on programming daily, we are going to share our plans for reveals, franchises, partnerships, and merch quickly and share these updates with groups internally and with the neighborhood on RoosterTeeth.com
TO OUR FINAL SEASON
Although not intentional, it’s solely applicable that our final season of “Pink vs. Blue” coincides with us navigating this closure collectively. Our legacy isn’t just a set of content material however a historical past of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts. Rooster Tooth has made an indelible mark on the media {industry}, and we needs to be so happy with the numerous methods we pioneered a enterprise connecting creators and content material with a devoted neighborhood.
With respect, gratitude, and honest appreciation,
Jordan Levin