SHOUT OUT - Rooster Teeth were the machinima OG’s, and don’t deserve this ending
Red vs. Blue.
By Jonathan Garrett
07/03/24
NOTE: thatHITBOX Shout Out’s are not sponsored content. They’re games, developers, individuals, or issues that we want to highlight and share purely out of interest.
Another industry closure has rocked social media earlier today, with the announcement that Warner Bros. Discovery have decided to pull the plug on Rooster Teeth after a 21 year run. It’s particularly egregious at a time when the games and creative industries are being routinely gutted in order to maximise shareholder profits, and the consequences of rapid consolidation is becoming more apparent.
This doesn’t erase the memories of some unpleasant working conditions at Rooster Teeth that have previously been well documented. But the bottom line: no company deserves to be axed in this fashion. There are all kinds of questions about content preservation and ongoing access to purchased items that inevitably emerge in the wake of a decision like this, but the most important issue is the significant job losses soon to follow.
No-one deserves to feel the weight of that stress, particularly having worked for a company that was an early pioneer in internet media. The talented folks who worked for Rooster Teeth, both past and present, have a wonderful legacy of incredible content behind them, and that creativity deserves to be recognised.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
