Mark your calendar and get your hankies ready. Rooster Teeth, the Austin-based streaming studio responsible for Red vs. Blue, RWBY, Achievement Hunter, Camp Camp and so much more, has announced its final stream will take place 2pm central on April 26.
The event was confirmed by Creative Director (and star of RT show RWBY) Barbara Dunkelman and RWBY writer/director Kerry Shawcross via Instagram, who promised that the event will feature RTers from across the company looking back on 21 years of shows, community, and fun. The event will be available via Rooster Teeth’s YouTube channel and also on rt-tv.
The stream will complete a long farewell from the studio that helped pioneer streaming entertainment that has been ongoing since the announcement on March 6 that the company is folding due to the seeming impossibility of turning a profit in the modern digital landscape.
That’s the disturbing underlying truth about the firm that, in many ways, pioneered and professionalized streaming entertainment. Founded in 2003 (two years before YouTube), it found success and cult status through the success of Red vs. Blue, a machinima comedy using in-game footage from Halo. Over the following 21 years, it launched multiple successful shows and brought others under its umbrella, such as the gaming-centric Achievement Hunter. In recent years, it also launched a successful podcasting arm, with Dungeons & Dragons-based Tales From the Stinky Dragon gaining a cult following. However, the shifting nature of online advertising has increasingly left the company in a financial hole, until this year owners Warner Bros. Discovery announced they were finally pulling the plug. The remaining staff (decreased after several years of cost cutting) are to be laid off, and the company is considering offers for the existing shows and IP.
However, the April 26 livestream isn’t the only event between now and the website and all apps shutting down on May 15. There will also be a livestream at 3pm, April 24, dedicated to animation smash RWBY, with a cast and crew retrospective looking back on the show that managed the impossible and became the first American-made anime to be distributed in Japan. Plus, the story of RT ends where it began on May 7, when the final season of Red vs. Blue will be released digitally.
The countdown has already had some memorable moments, but few have more hilarious resonance than a final streaming reunion of the company founders – Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, and Gus Sorola – playing Halo (badly) for one last time.
This article appears in April 19 • 2024.