- Joined
- Feb 25, 2019
REST IN PISS
(2003-2024)
Update (1/20/2022) Ryan Haywood and RoosterTeeth are currently being sued by a Jane Doe over Ryan's Sex Pestcapades. The Posts for it starts here. The lawsuit as been settled as of 06/30/2023
Update (10/04/2020): So Ryan Haywood of Achievment Hunter and Adam Kovik of FunHaus have both been outed as sex pests. If you're interested in this information, feel free to view the thread for it here.
Update (10/16/2022): The company is currently shitting itself and everyone is dogpiling on them after Matt Bragg was summarily "dissolved" (see: put into a position to quit) from his job, resulting in several current and former employees coming out with their statements against the company a la Change The Channel. That starts here.
If you're here to post anything RoosterTeeth related, please ARCHIVE IT, as RoosterTeeth is currently in DFE mode to appease their leftist fanbase.
If anyone needs to download videos from their youtube pages, use this, or this.
If you are familiar with the old Youtube days, you likely remember Red Vs Blue, a show created by RoosterTeeth, that was founded by Bernie Burns, Matt Hollum, Geoff Ramsey, Gus Sorola, and Joel Haymen. The company found great success in their machinima series, that they went from working in Bernie's spare bedroom, to a full pledged studio and office. They then began hiring on more folks, such as Gavin Free, Barbara Dunkelman, Jack Patillo, Miles Luna, Michael and Lindsey Jones, Ray Nevarez, and Monty Oum. All of whom eventually finding their place within the company to lead it to a golden age of early day Let's Plays, comedic shorts, and even some attempts at animation.
Today however, Bernie has left to newer pastures, Joel was fired for being BASED, and a majority of their projects are tanking, subscribers stagnating, along with views dwindling. Their infamous FIRST Membership program, once praised for its innovative means in letting the people fund for their content before the days of Patreon, is "No longer enough" to keep their ship floating. The flagship series RvB, while still in the works, is left in the dust for other, less profitable ventures as the company is slowly on a death spiral while they attempt to find other shows to replace former ones, if not outright copy current shows.
Achievement Hunter, and the poor attempt at diversity.
Achievement Hunter, a branch of Rooster Teeth solely dedicated towards their Let's Play series, hasn't been without it's controversies. Mainly, that of Mica Burton, child of LeVar Burton (who played Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: TNG). Upon the surface, Mica is Rooster Teeth's attempt at trying to diversify their cast. In reality however, she was hired on with the intent of using her for DEI points, shielding Rooster Teeth from criticism towards failing to diversify, while also trying to suck her dad's BBC in hopes of gaining some sweet sweet Hollywood connections. She left in 2018, citing she wanted to go back to Los Angeles to "pursue her acting and modeling careers".
(Archive of Mica's rant)
In 2020, during the peak of the BLM movement, Mica would call her former employers out over twitter, claiming they were more concerned over her Father not liking Rooster Teeth (hard to imagine why), over being constantly harassed online. This harassment was sparked by Burnie asking her about what experiences she had dealing with racism, which can be summarized as "I hated my skin, but I will punch you if you say racism doesn't exist anymore". The harassment became so severe, she contemplated suicide, and immediately quit the company. She was blacklisted in some capacity in the Austin acting scen, despite Barbara, Geoff, and Jeremy supporting her statement regarding the company's priorities.
She was then replaced with Fiona Nova, who, like her previous DEI hire, has also spoken out regarding her mistreatment. One might wonder, why has Fiona stuck around when Mica saw the truth and left?It's because Fiona is simply a multiracial female DSP parrot who now had a ESG backed company backing her.
Oh, and there's porn of these idiots, because why not. a small thread on the terrible AH Community can be found here.
RWBY, Gen:LOCK, and other animated misadventures.
(Note: I picked the White trailer because it had my favorite song out of all of them. Bite me.)
RWBY, next to RvB serves as one of the companies few successful ventures, if not, their magnum opus, despite it's glaring mediocrity in how poorly the show is written out. Lore about the series is dubiously canon, and the show is outright barred from criticism due to Monty Oum, the series creator, dying as a result of trying to please his waifu by building a tolerance towards cat dandruff. for further info on RWBY, a separate thread can be found here. a thread regarding Monty's "widow", Nicole, can be found here.
Gen:LOCK, while less recognized, is an even bigger shitshow with how it was developed. So much funding was put into Gen:LOCK, that the director and then head of RT's Animation department, Gray Haddock, stole funds from another series in development (Nomad of Nowhere). During that time, for four months, the show went without voice acting, with Gray doing some voice work until he had Michael B. Jordan signed on, who he desperately sought to fill in the role of the main protagonist. In the process of trying to bring his show to life, Haddock brought in dozens of unpaid interns on contract to animate the show, with the former interns leaving negative glassdoor reviews that shows how Gray lied to them, saying that they'd become full time employees. to this day those glassdoor reviews still scar RT's animation department.
Some GlassDoor Reviews include the following noted critques that Rooster Teeth will never accept:
A high school drama environment with management being non-existent, and less then ideal pay.
Again, terrible pay, and excessive crunch time that could have been avoided. You know you fucked up when even your low level employees know you could've avoided crunch.
People with no experience being forced to train other people with no experiences, along with following the worst processes an animation studio can do.
Overtime was not paid at all, resulting in hours of free work done off the backs of unpaid interns. There was also cliques within the animation department, all of whom, rather then work and collaborate, spent more time talking shit towards each other.
While Gray's connections to Warner Bros allotted a slot for the show to be broadcast on TV (specifically Toonami's anime block), the series tanked in predicted expectations. Despite Gen:LOCK's failure however, the series was picked up by HBO for their streaming service, and a second season was in development.
In the midst of all this, and hoping to stop a repeat of Gray embezzling from other projects again, someone from the Animation department directly went to the then CEO Matt Hollum, who was livid with what he found out Gray screwed over other projects, leading to him being summarily given the boot, and two head of animations were assigned as to prevent another scenario like Gen:LOCK from happening again. for a more detailed read over it, feel free to read an archived reddit post here. Amusingly, despite Gray being fired and ruining the animation department, he was contracted to do voice work for a series the department worked on for Netflix: Transformers: The war for Cybertron.
While this went on, other, smaller series were developed, such as Camp Camp (Which is now paywalled behind Rooster Teeth's first), and X-ray and Vav (which was killed off after Ray left Achievement hunter, but Ray remained on good terms and made an occasional appearance on their podcast, Off-Topic).
Other incidents of note
The Vic Mignogna accusations
In 2019, Vic was #Metoo'd as a part of a smear campaign led by a whale named Monica Rial and Soy boi domestic abuser Ron Toye. Rooster Teeth, instead of responding with a lolwhatever, shat themselves. Along side Funimation, they gave Vic the boot from voice acting in RWBY. Vic has since filed suit against Funamation in an attempt to clear his name. For more info on the lawsuit, see this thread here. For more info on Monica and Ron, view their thread here. To remind Ron that he's a wife-beating piece of shit that Monica Rial eventually couldn't stand, feel free to leave him a shout here.
Update 2024: Vic has lost his suit, his appeal, and now owes attorney fees of over half a million. Thanks, Ty Beard.
The arrest of Michael Quinn
On November 9 2019, Michael Quinn, Rooster Teeth's Vice President of Product and Engineering, was arrested for Domestic abuse against his wife. Details include that he smashed her hand into a door as she tried to escape, and that he assaulted her with a three hole punch. She was strangled until she had lost consciousness, and awoke to Quinn biting her. Despite the severity of the assault and threats that Quinn would kill his wife, he was released on a personal recognizance bond, meaning he didn't have to pay to be released, but simply powmise the judge he won't be a bad boy while out on bail. The irony is not lost on those who support Vic Mignogna, as both Quinn and Ron Toye spoke in support of Monica Rial's false accusations towards Vic.
Knuckles Dawson
(Credit to @5t3n0g0ph3r for archiving the info on this. )
David "Knuckles Dawson" Dreger, was a high-level Achievement Hunter community member, who was ostracized without notice by the AH Crew after it was discovered he was sexting with a minor in the community. On May 26, 2013, he disappeared and his body was recovered a month later. It was likely that he An Hero'd himself due to the discovery of his actions. This resulted in Rooster Teeth martyring Dreger, regarding him as an important member of the early AH community.
Rooster Teeth store hit by skimmers.
For a brief period in December 2019, the store was hit by hackers who used a spoof page to gather the payment info of users buying from the store. It was caught immediately, but did affect a small amount of customers. In compensation, those who were affected were simply offered Experian credit monitoring for a year.
NIGGA CLAUS, Courtesy of Michael Jones:
(Thanks to @FreeYourDoodies for sourcing this).
The Gay Ops/Catfishing of 2020
(Huge Thanks to @Null for compiling this information)
It is currently unknown when this began, but on October 2020, the dick pics and nudes of Ryan Haywood (Achievement Hunter), Adam Kovic (Funhaus) And Alec Paul (Intern/ Former Crew Member of Cow Chop, and Off-Canny) were published in a G.Drive. The images and links have been archived in a separate thread, that can be found here.
As if 10/06/2020, both Ryan and Adam have resigned from their positions at RoosterTeeth, with Adam notabily showing no remorse for showing his microdick, and Ryan asking that his family be left alone (weather this is true or not that his family has been harassed, I'd politely ask that no one bother them for Ryan's shitty choices).
Update as of 1/20/2022: Ryan and RoosterTeeth are currently being sued in the 98th district court over Ryan's Sex Pestcapades. The Plaintiff is listed as Jane Doe, but reading through the documents currently have led to some speculation that she is Julie Parkinson, aka @PandaBear_Julie on Twitter, as there are similarities to the info in the petition that are similar to Parkinson's recollection of events.
Update 2023: The case was settled out of court, without prejudice, meaning it can be re-filed in the future should more evidence be obtained.
The self-imposed exile of Hembohero/James Chung
If you've been in the community long enough, you have likely ran into compilation clips from individual by the name of Hembohero. Hero, as he'll be referred to from now on, for over a decade made compilations of all the podcasts, including the Internet Box Podcast, a podcast started by Michael Jones before joining Rooster Teeth. His compilations earned millions of views, as they highlighted a lot of best of moments from the many episodes of the normal RT podcast, Off-Topic, and even Achievement Hunter's Minecraft LPs. But, like all good things, it must end, and it ended with a banger of a shitfit from a current cast member by the name of Ky Cooke, aka Mica #3.
She was set to replace Fiona, who has gone on to produce low tier quality films "backed" by mysteriously funded kickstarter campaigns. In one Episode of Off-Topic, Ky boasted having stolen candy from a drug store, which resulted in a statement by Hero decrying her actions. The results of this post was an immediate pants shitting spergout by the indoctrinated fanbase and an indignant Ky, who back the petty theft of candy with glee to the point Hero DFE'd his content and went hidden for a while. After a month, Hero posted the video above, stating his feelings about the matter, saying he'd no longer be making compilations, his content would stay up, and fuck this, I don't need this shit, I'm out of here.
Rooster Teeth Podcast Animated Adventures
An animated series started by Jordan Cwierz to highlight interesting moments from their many many podcasts (mainly the RT podcast), most of which tend to be ether moments of autism, or drunken antics. It now serves as one of the few bits of content that manage to get over 100k views on their main channel. Interesting moments include:
Bernie having gotten so drunk at an East Coast Penny Arcade eXpo (PAX) he called himself CatBug at a dinner, and threw people out of a party with bags of popcorn.
Matt Hollum, the former CEO of the company, drunk, buying dinners for people at a Dave and Busters that nearly resulted in him missing a mortgage payment, and being taken by Geoff and Gus to meetings while intoxicated.
Mica Burton mentioning a time when her dad stuck a phone in the microwave in an attempt to dry it.
Miles Luna, one of the writers for RWBY, and his many drunken/autistic antics.
Blaine, digging for videos to post for RT Life, found a video of other employees using adult diapers and attempting to soil them.
Bernie, after getting blueballed, spanked his salami but forgot to DFE his browsing history, leading to an awkward moment in a car ride with his wife.
Geoff, in an attempt to do something new with his ex-wife, Griffon, let her attempt to sodomize him. It did not go well.
Joel Heymen, in an effort to one up celebs while he was an extra for Ally McBeal, ate a bowl of bac-o-bits and had the shits as a badge of honor.
Out of all the stories on RTAA, the only egregious one (in my opinion) would be the story of Matt going to meetings drunk. In any other company, he'd be given the boot out the door, but because Rooster Teeth is known for drunken antics, most, if not all stories are met by fans with hahaha, these fucktards love to drink and do stupid shit.
RT Life
a short forum video series that depicts dumb antics at the office of Rooster Teeth, some highlights include:
That time Monty had a dead bird on his car for a week. (original video had someone mentioning it, along with a "tombstone" that said "Dead bird 2013-2013")
Gavin and Jack playing tennis, where the loser has to lick Gus' shingles leg. (Spoilers: Gavin lost because of course he would)
Monty and Kerry drunkenly bumbling about a hotel
Joe the cat, being a cat, and also puking everywhere.
A literal waste of time (and talent) as Miles and Aaron tape Blaine into a chair for shits and giggles.
Gus, Bernie, Brandon, and Barbara drag a potential investor along with them to jump a random redditor's truck. It goes about as awkwardly as you think.
Other shitty ventures into other industries.
RWBY and Gen:LOCK however are not their only attempt at striking out in other forms of media. RWBY: Grimm Eclipse was published to steam, to... niche positive reviews, leading them to make more RWBY games, mainly for PC and Android.
Their latest venture into the gaming industry, Vicious Circle, was very poorly received, as the game was essentially a bootleg clone of Evolve, but 10x shittier. The game was so bad, it went Free to Play and still could not bring an audience. The game died before it was even published. Between the failure of Vicious Circle and Gen:LOCK, the loss of revenue was so great it led Rooster Teeth to lay off %13 of their staff.
Lllllllllllet's waste money.
Along with dabbing into game development, Rooster Teeth attempted to sponsor smaller creative channels. Affectionately dubbed the "Let's Play Family", the results are the following:
Funhaus: still active, but has had major departures of several original cast members. Known for their Demo Disc series (As well as looking up furry porn while they do so), viewership remains mostly stagnant. They also slowed down their excessive drinking when playing games, despite it being their highest viewed content. Rooster Teeth colabs with Funhaus frequently, and hosts their merch.
The Creatures: "Joined" the Let's Play family in 2016, but died within a year after a major split off of most of the cast that became Cow Chop. Appeared at RTX several times, and once had merch hosted on site.
Cow Chop: Their joining in 2017 was led by RoosterTeeth's 1st program being used as a means of crowd funding their move to Los Angeles, something they would absolutely not regret in any capacity. The channel would last up until 2020, with the dual hosts/founder of the channel, UberHaxorNova (Aka James) leaving not only the channel, but California in 2019, after an injury to his arm and ankle from a self-inflicted skateboarding accident. With their contracts set to expire in 2020, a skeleton crew of their second host Aleks, channel manager Brett, and interns (who split off to form Off-Canny, a sketch group that has not posted since 2023) would help finish off the channel. Rooster Teeth mostly helped by setting up colabs with SP7 and Funhaus, guest appearances from the main Roosterteeth crew (when initially they were in Colorado) as well as being their merch store host and letting them host panels at RTX.
Sugar Pine 7: Purchased for 5 BTC on 11 January 2018 ($57,728.65 at the time). Won the 2018 Streamy awards, and at its peak made a million views on several videos. The channel then killed off their flagship series a year later, parted ways with Rooster Teeth in seemingly mixed terms, and have been posting podcasts ever since. Like Cow Chop, Rooster Teeth mainly supported the channel by being a merch store host and hosting panels at RTX, as well as colabs between Cow Chop and Funhaus.
Screw Attack (Now Death Battle): founded in 2006, hosted the iconic James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd show and rivaled with TGWTG. Bought out by Rooster Teeth in 2015 and was reworked into Death Battle in 2019, doing shitty mash ups of iconic video game or anime characters. it is a shell of it's former self with most of the former members having ditched Rooster Teeth to found Game Attack.
Criken: Unsure if partnered with Rooster Teeth, but was brought on to their gaming news show The Know (Now rebranded to Inside Gaming, which was formally ran by what is now the Funhaus crew) to discuss his lawsuit with a game he was developing called I.C.U, which was settled out of court and remains in Development Hell to this day. Rooster Teeth hosts merch for Criken as well.
What if... we put a bunch of monkeys in a room with type writers?
Essentially, RoosterTeeth's philsophy is to try "unique", or "eccentric" show ideas, that on paper, sound good, or is good. A positive example of that would be Master and Apprentice, in which Adam Ellis learns from a top notch prop maker how to make props. Sadly, despite the show being well put together, it only lasted two seasons before Adam, likely aware of the writing on the wall, also jumped ship as of January 2020.
An example of an autistically eccentric show, would be a show called Gorq's quest, in which a robot designed intentionally to be autistic, asks autistic questions. It lasted four episodes before the plug was pulled. There was also a podcast, in which RT discusses how it runs as a business. It lasted two episodes.
Day 5, in which the show's concept essentially boiled down to "what if Nightmare on Elm Street was a pandemic?", that lasted 14 episodes spanning two seasons, yet despite being out of production for four years, it is noted to be in development. John Flannagan, the main inspiration for the show, has left the company in December 2019, and securely stated that Rooster Teeth will likely never develop the show further, putting season 3 into a sort of limbo that most RWBY detractors can only hope happens to the show in an alternative universe.
Another more infamous example of Rooster Teeth dumb projects, was one started by Gavin Free simply asking "You would get a million dollars, but...". While the sketches within the show itself were interesting, it led the company to kickstart a rather crappy card game that one could simply do themselves with a small bit of creativity.
As of today, and other things of note.
Roosterteeth has put out a press release that can be summarized by this:
The saying "When you try to appease to everyone, you'll end up pissing off everyone" comes to mind.
WB has also begun purging useless entities to cut costs. While Rooster Teeth isn't on a chopping block, it's limbs are likely to be slowly ripped apart. Their death will not be a bang, but an alcoholic whimper.
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