As Warner Bros.’ entertainment division Rooster Teeth celebrates its 21st anniversary on 1 April, it’ll be its last as the company winds down its operations. The studio has hit animated series RWBY and Red Vs. Blue as well as other projects which air on YouTube under its belt, but the fate of its beloved animated shows remains uncertain.
The company was first founded in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman, and its first production was the wildly popular and longest-running webseries Red vs. Blue, which follows two opposing factions locked in a civil war. Its first episode had 21,000 downloads within a day, and at its peak, garnered over one million views.
Then came RWBY in 2013, which would be a hit with audiences worldwide, taking place in the world of Remnant, where humans wage war against supernatural creatures. The series went on to win several awards to critical acclaim. Its creator, Monty Oum, has since passed on. As the digital landscape of the 2010s shifted away from YouTube and pivoted towards streaming, Rooster Teeth would find itself struggling to retain its audience. The now-defunct entertainment company Fullscreen acquired Rooster Teeth in 2014, with the intention to keep up with viewer trends.
2016 and 2017 saw the release of Camp Camp and gen:LOCK, with gen:LOCK having its premiere on (HBO) Max. After the pandemic, Rooster Teeth’s viewership numbers dropped, and despite its efforts to widen its audience and grand twentieth anniversary celebration in 2023, the writing was on the wall.
An all-hands meeting was called at Rooster Teeth in March 2024, and the news of the studio’s imminent closure was relayed in a memo as well. General manager Jordan Levin went on to explain that, “Rooster Teeth is shutting down due to challenges facing digital media resulting from fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and monetization across platforms, advertising, and patronage”, adding further on in the memo, “Though not intentional, it’s only appropriate that our last season of Red vs. Blue coincides with us navigating this closure together. Our legacy is not just a collection of content but a history of pixels burned into our screens, minds, and hearts.”
The crew of RWBY however, were not informed of the studio’s closure, and composer Casey Lee Williams shared that she found out about the news through a Variety article posted to Twitter / X. Former RWBY animator Dillion Goo expressed their interest in acquiring RWBY from Rooster Teeth on X, captioning their post with “Much of our team worked on the original volumes and collaborated directly with Monty. We’d be honored to bring the series back and carry the torch.”
RWBY fans have taken to Twitter to campaign for the continuation of the show with the hashtag #SaveTeamRWBY, which has garnered widespread support for the fandom.
It’s currently unknown what will happen to Rooster Teeth’s current animated projects, as Warner Bros. Discovery is looking to sell the company’s animated projects. The nineteenth and final season of Red vs. Blue is set to premiere in 2024, giving Rooster Teeth a final sendoff honouring its roots as the company faces its imminent closure in the next few months.
Trinity is a geek who enjoys watching anime, superhero and Sci-Fi movies and TV shows. She enjoys gaming (however has terrible gacha luck) and creates cool homebrew campaigns in her free time. She’s always up for a new adventure — with a cosy jacket and a good book in hand.
