so yeah Rooster Teeth got shut down yesterday why did they get shut down well we're about to find out here we go I've been saying I want to stop streaming for five years well for basically theast why would you want to stop streaming it's fun if you don't enjoy streaming then you're doing it wrong I still say to this day I I'm going to stop streaming in 5 years but every time I say it I inevitably get someone who's not happy with that they say l you have to keep making content I want to go to your channel and see what's going on and I a rational person understand that's not possible I can't be making content forever I won't be entertaining forever I won't even be around forever so it doesn't make sense one day no it's not true I disagree I tremendously disagree you could be 70 years old and if you're a boring [ __ ] old man that's your problem I have to stop I'd rather stop on my own terms that makes a lot of sense but then when other people stop without telling me and Consulting me beforehand I'm getting a little pissed off about it and it just happened today with rooster te company that I think might have been one of the first YouTube videos I have ever watched when I started watching YouTube when I was 13 years old is gone now 21 years of making [ __ ] they are gone now and I did it without conferring with me what the [ __ ] now obviously Rooster Teeth has been a huge inspiration for a lot of people like laser beam who said he wouldn't had a career without Rooster Teeth as an early inspiration Nick from the yard said that's one of the companies he wanted to work for when he was like a young little chap you know and and I know a lot of people who were in that same boat Rooster Teeth was one of the originals you know like back in the in the 2000s like there wasn't really anybody doing what Rooster Teeth was doing and even in like the 2010s like early on nobody was still doing what Rooster Teeth was doing so they were so early to the game I think that's what really helped them grow a lot and for a while bro they were killing it and and I even get a small micro fraction of it now with people who want to work at offbrand which is terrifying to think about but but off excuse me Rooster Teeth has been an institution for a long long time they were the first podcast I'd ever watched the Rooster Teeth podcast I've probably saw seen 500 episodes I've heard this intro so many times I D has thought you had to start a podcast by it's muted am I missing something am I missing something this that it's copyrighted okay right okay go to the comments I broke my audio so it didn't play during the podcast intro which is both embarrassing and funny so yeah that's about okay CU she just [ __ ] up yeah what a great intro guys yeah those were the days huh introducing yourselves with the names of the people on the podcast or you wouldn't win an award until I had my own podcast and I was like actually you can just talk about [ __ ] fart and come and that's fine too obviously Rooster Teeth didn't have the most beautiful exit a company could it wasn't the prettiest death and not that you really can have a pretty death I think but but you know they they got into some heat uh we talked about it on this channel October when a lot of the stuff came out internally on how they they weren't the best company to work for uh and they tried to clean up their image and do better but what didn't come back was the views the way that they were able to make money the community members that that was never no they could have had human sacrifices at the office on a daily basis but if the content was s tier people would still tune in this is something that I firmly believe I firmly believe that the entertainment consumer does not care about any degree of morality or ethics whatsoever and the only exception is if the company is a big Pusher of social movements right because you always have these people are like oh well they've always got to make a statement about this they've always got to say something about it and yeah yeah yeah yeah if you do that and then it gets exposed that you're actually doing you know on your own uh all of the bad stuff that you're complaining about well then yes obviously people will not like that however otherwise nobody gives a [ __ ] about it I'm going to tell you guys something I'm going to hit you with a fact if they brought back the Roman coliseums there would be more people that would watch that than the Super Bowl because people like to be entertained and we weren't monkeys that long ago right I mean it's only been a few million years right so they already have it's called the [ __ ] UFC yeah but people don't die in the UFC right so it's not the stakes aren't as high so there's not really as big of a reason to watch but like if people died there then it would be totally different right when more people would watch right it's not even a question and so nobody really cares about any of this drama unless it's a company that likes putting itself out there as like a moral Arbiter where it once was like 10 years ago uh and it's tough because they are a huge company I mean they have hundreds of employees and they had to deal with several rounds of layoffs like that have happened basically all over Esports in the gaming industry and in the content creator industry uh but they dealt with it until today and the CEO Jordan uh threw out a message on rer teeth's website and they basically said that hey it's been tough uh to keep R teeth running due to challenges facing digital media resulting from fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and monetization across platforms advertising and patronage yeah she's a bummer because I think Rooster Teeth did a lot right one of the things that they did that I thought was super sick is that they had all their community members all of the paying patronage like they talked about there on their own website rooster teeth.com they weren't beholden to a YouTube or a twitch or or even like a patreon they they had their own thing they were able to you know service all their videos to their to their subscribing members through their own page and then get the largest cut of it which which is always really smart to me they always said that they even thought YouTube was like their competitor which is a mindset that nobody has nowadays they're just like oh we have to do YouTube back in the day they were doing stuff before YouTube which is crazy to think about uh but eventually yeah Rooster Teeth predates YouTube I'm pretty sure they switched right they they they sold and we'll talk about that in just a moment and I think they did some things that might be wrong um but it's not exactly like this this death of Rooster Teeth was a surprise you know it's been pretty obvious I do a daily check or not a daily checkin I do like every six-month check-in I do like a little self-indulgent six-month check-in where I look at a YouTube channel YouTuber or creator that I like and I see what they're up to if I haven't watched them in a long time you know let's see if they're still kicking if they're still killing it even if I don't like what they're currently doing if it's not my interest currently I want to make sure they're doing well or at least see what's up yeah and you know things haven't been so up for Rooster Teeth AT&T was talking about trying to sell Rooster Teeth literally three years ago uh so so you know writing has been on the wall clearly they weren't able to find a buyer and so they decided it was better to just cut their losses and stop at least losing money now this doesn't mean that everything Rous that has created is gone forever they I think the problem again the reason why Rooster Teeth killed itself by making bad content it's literally that simple that's it that's the bottom line and after the video I'll go through the analytics and we'll look at the analytics are still in conversations to sell their other IP like red vers blue ruby and genlock and those more valuable IPS might be purchased by someone uh you know more individually rather than having to buy the whole of Rooster Teeth yeah uh and then also I actually work with rooster teeth with the yard podcast they have a podcast network network they sell ads across podcasts the yard is one of those and we actually got an email that's like Hey we're still around I don't know if they're around forever or how long they'll be around but for now they are and we'll still get ads for the yard podcast that we will eventually ruin and not get paid for uh so there is that but let's go to I think why Rooster Teeth might have collapsed and it starts we got let's see some numbers you might know Machinima and Machinima eventually became a company called full screen which purchased Rooster Teeth in 2014 for an undisclosed amount of money uh they were purchased according to Bernie Burns one of the founders of Rooster Teeth was to be able to compete with the big conglomerates like HBO and Netflix who they saw as their modern day at the time competitors well that didn't work and I get that you know you're not going to be able to outscale a Netflix or HBO unless you have the backing of a much larger company which at that point was full screen for them and then full screen got bought by Otter Media uh who also owned crunchy roll and then that got rolled into like Warner media part of AT&T which eventually got split off into Warner Bros discovery which is a merger between Warner Bros and Discovery owned by at as their entertainment arm it's a lot of [ __ ] hands that were being transferred along the way think about how many guys are getting paid to make all these distinctions bro millions of dollars lot of corporate companies and a lot lawyers make a lot of money corporate mergers suck and we just had to stop supporting them and start fighting them Rooster Teeth was bought by full screen who was bought by Otter Media who was owned by AT&T who was bought by WB who was bought by Discovery who then shut it all down bro shut the [ __ ] up like the reason why Rooster Teeth got shut down is because nobody was watching the the videos nobody was consuming the content you just look at the numbers it's the same reason why they shut down G4 like what are you talking about like it's because of AT&T no anybody would have made this decision they weren't profitable they weren't even close there's no way that they were what I missed G4 yeah no you don't miss G4 you missed 2004 because you got G4 back and and nobody liked it and I don't know if that's necessarily true I'm sure there are examples of corporate mergers that have worked and even this one after the merger to be fair the the the new G4 was kind of bad in a lot of ways so it's not an exact comparison but hey there was a lot of success this is RTX which is the convention that didn't have the girls dancing around the bik shut down this past December why would you get rid of start with an attendance of 600 in 2011 and clim every single year 5,000 10,000 30,000 45,000 and this is after the merger they hit peaks of 60,000 people attending every year now I don't think Rooster Teeth was aided uh by covid I think that expedited the shutdown of Rooster Teeth they might have been around for another few years or they might have been able to turn things around had co uh not been a thing uh but it does make me think about my company because this is offbrand a company I'm also hoping to scale up and when I scale up a company I look at the only his situation is totally different it's nothing it it's not like rooster teeth at all because offbrand makes shows they they produce shows Rooster Teeth produces content so if you're basically doing the if you're doing the work for setting up a show there's always going to be people that want you to set up shows and really that's your business to lose if you do a bad job setting up a show so yeah I mean this is just really they're completely different things I don't think lwig has anything to worry about in this in this way the only thing that you have to worry about whenever you're making a production company like what lwig has is making sure that every single show that you do goes extremely well and that even goes as as far as being selective with the shows that you do so you're not com uh you know lumped together with a bad show even though it might not be your fault examples of who have done that in the space and I think a lot of them have an issue where they are basically built around a singular Creator and that Creator goes and the company goes but in rooster teeth's case they did the unthinkable it wasn't based around any specific Creator the brand Rooster Teeth is much larger than any individual person which is very impressive thing to do well it's a media brand which is like very different than for example you know he wants to do an ad I could do one too that's star Forge right so obviously star Forge has a lot to do with the success of the content creators that push star Forge but also the PCS themselves are either going to stand on their own or they're not and that's a completely different market so like basically he is like lwig is doing busino business marketing effectively right like he's not really marketing direct to consumer so his his goals are totally different and are actually much more in line with like his networking accountability and possibilities more so than like his entertainment value whereas like if you're selling a product like for example a pre-made PC uh that is going to be completely based off of um the value proposition that that PC provides at that price point and if the value proposition isn't there people won't buy them it's literally that simple whereas also with Rooster Teeth it's the value proposition of the entertainment value of the content however they did sell out they did eventually get a buyer and and I I'm not saying that's bad right they could have had good reasons to do it I don't think it was just to make [ __ ] money and get out of there but I do think it is what made them lose the edge in the charm because it was no longer about just what the employees wanted to make and the cool [ __ ] they wanted to make happen it was about also feeding the bottom line and the demands this is also a really big problem that a lot of play a lot of people get into and this is also a lot of like streamers and YouTubers have this problem YouTubers have it a lot less but streamers have it especially because a lot of streamers and people try to sell a fantasy of like we're friends and we're just playing video games together but the reality is that they're in a studio and they're making a lot of money and you're just sitting in your mom's basement and like there's a certain level of parasocial expectation that streams have and it's actually been one of the reasons why like for me like you see a lot of streamers and this used to be extremely common it's not as common anymore like a lot of streamers don't like talking about how much money they make or anything like that because they think that that disconnects them from Their audience because now Their audience won't be able to relate to them in the same way and there's a lot of different ways it does yeah and if you want to say it does then it does for sure but the point is that there is a fantasy that is going on there and it is a fantasy it's not real but the viewers want it to be real of the owner of what you are trying to create which I've talked about this before I'm hoping to avoid by making offbrand a workers Co-op where all of the workers are owning the company and getting to decide what they do uh what they make how much they make etc etc and and my go goal with that is to make something that lasts nothing lasts forever you know that's that's a fact but but I'd like to be able to make a sustainable company that makes cool [ __ ] that if you work at makes your life better and and hopefully a co-op uh I don't think is going to like I don't really know a lot about this I don't think that having a co-op is going to Future proof a business because the reason why is because the focus is not on the end product anything that does not empower the end product and you can make the abstract argument that a c op will make people feel more invested and therefore they'll work harder sure I can understand that argument but I don't think that's very strong in general and I think a much stronger argument overall is that if you're focusing on something that is not the actual business and not the actual product that you're selling then you're going to have problems that's what matters the most and the moment that you stop thinking about the customer is the moment the customer stops thinking about you in 20 years you don't see the shutdown of that and that's able to outlive me that's that's that's just my [ __ ] goal uh anyway I wanted to get that out there maybe it'll crash and burn this will all be an embarrassing failure that we'll talk about in years from now but I'll take the risk and I'll put my all to it so it doesn't happen and I appreciate companies like Rooster Teeth for being examples even if it didn't work out 21 years is [ __ ] impressive the people who made it deserve to to get their Laurels now uh and and may it rest in our memories shout out Rooster Teeth for inspiring everyone and that's also subscribe see you later goodbye goodby yeah I mean I I was inspired by Rooster Teeth back in the day I mean I'll [ __ ] tell you that I think that a lot of people have been I mean the truth is Rooster Teeth was one of the original uh content creators on YouTube I mean they were one of the ogs I mean [ __ ] man like I think lwig is right and it's sad to see what happened right it really is but the truth is that um [ __ ] that's life yeah fun house kept me sane for years yeah you know just manage media burning money with the expectation that something would be huge and pay for all other mediocre content that just happens once or twice I mean you just don't manage so I really have to I have to correct you here you don't just manage media burning money in the expectation that something would be huge and pay for all the other mediocre stuff welcome to venture capitalism because you know with all the you know the all the all the mediocre stuff well you write that off your taxes and then you you have to pay less taxes on the things that are huge it's it's a [ __ ] scam like I remember whenever somebody explained that to me I was like I should start one of these Venture Capital venture capitalist firms this is a really good idea like holy [ __ ] no I I think that you're actually totally wrong about this and and I think it's extremely common that media companies do this exact thing so anyway uh I'll go ahead and I'm going to look and show you guys why Rooster Teeth failed okay so we're going to go to social blade and as you can see right here you have this is their amount of views and do we have a longer longitudinal uh detailed let's go ahead and let's just start with this right so they lost 10,000 subscribers on the 3 and this was before they announced that they were leaving um they were they were disbanding and if you go here monthly subscribers gained and so if you look every single month you have a minus 10,000 except for for this one and it was only a zero and if you go this is also minus 10,000 uh this one was a zero uh then- 10,000 this one's minus 30,000 they had a pretty bad month there that was a month where they got exposed for all of that bad business practice stuff and so they lost more subscribers that month and then in May 2021 they managed to gain actually 10,000 subscribers pretty crazy there and then they went back to their usual Norm of losing 10,000 subscribers so if you're on a boat that's leaking water for 3 years what do you think is going to happen to the boat I'll tell you what's going to happen it's going to sink the boat's going to sink and I'm going to be honest Guys these guys were at the bottom of the ocean years ago and it just wasn't uh they just didn't realize it they didn't see it yet so let's go back we'll look at this here look at video views uh subscribers minus 10,000 and it's a green number uh estimated earn earnings $9,000 so let's assume that they made $155,000 we're going to be really generous about this do you think that $155,000 is going to cover the salaries of everybody that works in that company I bet it's [ __ ] not and I understand that they have patreon and other things as well but let's be honest YouTube Revenue matters a whole lot more whenever you're getting a lot more views so you look at the video views for the last 30 days 2.4 million views this is my clip Channel today we've had 2.7 million views this is just the clips Channel if you compare to uh lewig 48 million views he had 41 million views right here on this day whenever I guess he uploaded a video look at that lwig is killing it he's popping off let's look at U 16 million views also killing it look at that look at her Channel's gone up a lot apparently I think she's been adding like doing a lot of shorts and stuff like that now too and so that's apparently helped her a lot and so yeah she's doing great and so if you compare this to anybody else who is successful uh xqc oh there you go right 10 million views xqc has like five different YouTube channels like I get recommended videos from 's YouTube channels constantly and I'm not exactly sure but like look at this right average views 30 million 20 million 30 million bro he is farming he has been farming for a long long time and again let's go back to Rooster Teeth like if you see a graph like this this is a bad graph right like this is clearly a very very very bad graph when was the last time that they had three video videos in a row get over 200 get over 200,000 views three videos in a row that get over 200,000 views let's see if we can find one all right okay so looking for 200,000 views we're going to scroll down it's 93 almost got okay 300,000 okay the last then the one after is at 9,000 this is at 16,000 147 and 18 and 24 so we're already into one year ago Jesus 316 oh nope nope two nope almost almost with this little run here 200 nope they've been going down since 2020 realistically I mean this is bad we're we're into two years ago at this point geez I actually want to keep going I I yeah I I kind of want to get to the bottom of this and see what's going on here okay this is 200 no the other ones are bad it feels like the lower I go the higher the numbers are just in general man we're going into we going to be into three years ago soon oh that's 200 okay no not quite oh my God yeah like how far are we going to have to go here 3 years ago so this was even before all that drama happened oh my God I'm just going to scroll down is this just all the same oh that's 200 okay oh oh here we go here we go 3 years ago look at this 100 half a million 400,000 400,000 600 700,000 almost 97,000 not so good 675,000 200,000 262,000 1.1 million 2,261 see they were farming and then they stopped farming that title though yeah but the title Works they have shows on their own website yeah but like why would you make like did haven't they had shows on their own website for years they probably had shows on their own ite back then too that's covid numbers yeah there could be a number of different reasons for that but either way um if you look at these videos these videos the views on them are terrible nobody's watching the content so if you want to ask who killed Rooster Teeth I'll tell you who killed Rooster Teeth Rooster Teeth killed Rooster Teeth and how did they do it by making bad content that's the reason the content was simply not engaging to the audience and if it was engaging to the audience well then of course people would would watch it but it wasn't so that's the reason what's uh so what's bad about versus Now versus then well before they were getting views and now they're not that's what's bad but why I don't know I'd probably have to spend dozens of hours figuring out the reason for that like I I I really don't know why and it doesn't matter really why does it does it really matter what the reason is whenever you're not making any money no it doesn't because you're still not making any money sad to see
