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This probably isn't surprising to anyone whose followed the string of not knowing what they're doing, bad financial decisions, and mismanagement that has defined Rooster Teeth the past half decade and change.

The days of Red vs Blue are long past us. Even Achievement Hunter is gone. Death Battle's still chugging but has been spinning its wheels for years. The only real draw the company seemed to have to even remotely support its massive and bloated list of productions (the equivalent of throwing gak at the wall and throwing money even at the things that didn't stick) is RWBY and RWBY just can't carry the stable on its own. Most of their better stuff has been slowly (or quickly) driven into the ground and their resources wasted on trash pit projects that rapidly became boondoggles. Looking at you Gen:Lock and that bizarre RWBY/Justice League crossover.

Upside is, some of the brand names and personalities will probably continue under new names or companies (RWBY will almost certainly be acquired by someone else or kept by Warner Bros.... Hopefully acquired by someone else).

But it still feels like the end of an era, and the making of a probably fun documentary somewhere about how a company that rose to such heights managed to so proverbially gak itself, shoot its own foot, sit in the gak and shoot itself in the foot again, before finally throwing all of its money at a Rube Goldeburg machine to blow its own brains out because wow have the last few years been an amazing display of setting your own dumpster on fire and saying 'this is fine.'

Also the creepy sex stuff. No idea how that shook out in the end, if it ever did, but that's not someone a small company wants to get in the news for.

Farewell, Rooster. There was a time you were great. Guess you'll rest in peace now.

Hey, the RWBY/JL crossover movies were good. Also the first comic series. The second comic series not so much though… I do hope the mainline is able to continue. Wanna see that thru to the ending.

Also… Aren’t they still making RvB?

Also also… Man Gen:LOCK really sucked in the second season. First season was alright, but that second one was just Bad.

It's definitely an end of an era.

RT definitely suffered from its success in a sense. Some friends doing funny gaming videos that turned into a media company that tried to keep the vibe of "just guys having fun".

It sponsored a lot of good talent and a lot of that talent will now be struggling to find work in an industry getting flooded with AI garbage and ruled by brutal corporate overlords.

Past success and nostalgia could only keep people going for so long and for what was essentially a televised friend group, it did well to last as long as it did.

 AduroT wrote:
Hey, the RWBY/JL crossover movies were good. Also the first comic series. The second comic series not so much though… I do hope the mainline is able to continue. Wanna see that thru to the ending.

RWBY as a property is probably worth more than the rest of Rooster Teeth as a whole.

I wouldn't be surprised if Crunchy Roll or Capcom or someone tried to acquire it.

The movies also aren't bad, but rumors of cost overruns plagued the production.

Also… Aren’t they still making RvB?

No one cares about anything in RvB since the Freelancer saga.

The Zero season was barely even related and basically just cashed on the name and Restoration became a stand-alone film that still hasn't released and also has nothing to do with RvB beside the name. RvB as most of us knew is long gone. What remains is just one of the few old RT cashcows they've continued throwing money at despite the fandom shedding numbers rapidly and the viability of the projects continually shrinking.

In essence, the RvB everyone knew and cared about ended nearly 10 years ago but Rooster Teeth's proverbial failing since then has been sinking money into sinking ships which is less a comment on quality of their stuff and more about how almost nothing they make actually justifies the money they spend on it from a business standpoint, Gen:Lock being a standout example of something that rapid didn't justify its costs in Season 1 and got worse in Season 2.

Yeah, you summed it up pretty well in the OG post, Rooster Teeth has been a dead company walking for a long time, with pretty much just their initial inertia of their shows and IP propping up their downward spiral while all the talent either died, left or went down in controversy. I know I was only interested in RWBY up until after Volume 4 I saw where they were going after Monty Oum unfortunately died and they went really off the rails with their worldbuilding and focusing bizarrely more on ships that the fandom was obsessed with.

RvB had a big impact on me as a teen, but haven't watched anything in years. Still a little sad to see them go, nostalgia is a powerful drug.

Kind of mad to think that they were big enough at one time to influence Bungie into creating a seasonal special game mode (Grifball).

For whom it may concern;

Viz Media has announced that they have acquired the rights to RWBY from Rooster Teeth, who went bankrupt earlier this year.

RWBY was basically the only thing Rooster Teeth still had with any value. Presumably this means there may yet be a conclusion to the series. Viz had previously published RWBY's manga adaptation.

So I only recently found out that Rooster Teeth is the reason the Slow Mo Guys started, so I guess that is part of their legacy too. Little bit more indirect though.

Interesting, it depends on if they have new writers or they're just going rehire CRWBY and if there's more oversight in general, the plot direction and pacing has largely been the weakness of the series so if they can focus on consistent character development and less on pandering to fan ships.

As a Brit of a certain age, I'm guessing that the Viz Media referenced here is not the Viz that I would be more familiar with

 Flinty wrote:
As a Brit of a certain age, I'm guessing that the Viz Media referenced here is not the Viz that I would be more familiar with

Wikipedia tells me they are unrelated, despite the similar names and both being in the comicbook industry.