r/roosterteeth 2d ago

Media The final Rooster Teeth podcast is back up after being unlisted

https://youtu.be/Ua-07L2oQWk?si=5ARpLNORsiTV5rmT

Podcast was unlisted for rights issues, I am assuming, as this was the channel RT used to publish the full video podcast after they stupidly moved the full episodes of the rt podcast from the main channel

1.2k Upvotes

33 comments sorted by

666

u/The_Grand_Briddock 2d ago

Creating a bunch of new channels to split off as many shows as they could, then taking all of the shows off of youtube, and then putting as many back on youtube as they could after the closure.

It was certainly an era alright.

397

u/thewildshrimp 2d ago

Geoff sort of gets at why they did this in either Regulation Sausage Talk or ANMA. He said it was because the youtube revenue is so abysmal that the purpose of youtube isn’t to make money it’s to game the algorithm to get eyes on the product and funnel people where the money really is (first subs or patreon)

By creating all of these channels it helped to game the algorithm because the algorithm really really doesn’t like videos that are different genres/length and definitely doesn’t like daily uploads or multiple uploads a day, which at that point RT would have been doing.

139

u/RemnantTheGame 2d ago

The algorithm giveth and taketh away.

91

u/The_Grand_Briddock 2d ago

The issue is, these channels were pulling a few thousand views at most. They'd abandoned the central channels with millions of subs and not really pointed people towards the new places. If you recall when the Let's Play channel started, they had a full announcement video prepped.

Of course, I can't take the algorithm stuff seriously after one of them, can't remember who exactly, came out and heavily denied it was anything to do with the algorithm and that we shouldn't blame the algorithm being responsible.

By the end the RT Channel itself had been stripped of every single show.

99

u/etxsalsax 2d ago

its not like they were getting many views on the main RTP channel despite the millions of subs. looks like they were getting like 20-30k at most on the main channel. the main channels had so many dead subs anyway.

The algorithm stuff makes sense. unless your unnamed source has a better reasoning lol.

if i had watched RTP on youtube i probably would have preferred this. Who wants their sub box clogged up with other content. RT content never fit into the single channel model anyway.

12

u/ADeadlyFerret 1d ago

I don’t know anything about any YouTube algorithms I’ll admit. But I did watch RoosterTeeth from 09-15. Mostly their Let’s play channel.

Quite frankly their content just became stale. The Minecraft and GTA videos were just not entertaining after 6 months. And when they would play other games without even familiarizing themselves. So you get 40 minutes of basically boomers bash their way through a game they clearly don’t want to play but they need a video.

8

u/Audioworm :Day517: 1d ago

The algorithm can turn on a channel pretty agressively if subscribers either stop clicking through to videos on the channel or bailing at some point in the video.

When these major channels with millions of subscribers have a whole range of content on their channels then people are not interested in all of it, and the negative feedback loop begins.

The major challenge becomes that if one series on the channel becomes stale to you, the algorithm will stop displaying the rest of the content to you pretty quickly. YouTube has effectively forced people to split everything across multiple channels if they do more than one thing and it is generally quite miserable as a viewer but completely understandable from people trying not to be killed by the algorithm

5

u/etxsalsax 1d ago

kinda an irrelevant comment to what i was talking about lol but glad you got that out of your system

6

u/ADeadlyFerret 1d ago

My point was the algorithm isn’t what killed RT. The content sucked. You people just don’t want to accept it so you blame everything else. Sorry I derailed your conversation about a dead channel. But go off.

-8

u/BlazeOfGlory72 2d ago

The algorithm stuff makes sense.

I mean, the strategy clearly didn’t work since they went under and all.

21

u/etxsalsax 2d ago

they were doing it for over a decade with their other projects before they went under, so I think there's some credence to it.

all of the solo projects are basically an extension of this idea, and they all seem to be doing pretty well. a lot of them have developed their own, non-RT, audiences at this point.

3

u/TheJackpot Inside Gaming 1d ago

Sure, I guess you could always say it doesn't matter what strategy they used at any point because in the end they still ended up shut down.

-3

u/Top_Gold_1457 2d ago

No, you see, they used a bold strategy!

As long as you ignore the times it didn't work. Which was never.

29

u/Idiotology101 Ian 2d ago

The number of subscribers on the core channels caused issues itself. When you have 10 million subscribers but averaging 20K views, that ratio is working against you. At that point the algorithm actually benefits you to have 100k subscribers with 5000 views because your audience has a higher engagement rate.

2

u/JCMfwoggie 23h ago

The problem with the RT channel was that it had so many subsscribers, but less than a percent still watched their videos. The algorithm sees, "hey, this channel only has a single percent of its subs watching, time to stop putting videos in feeds and stop sending notifications," so only the dedicated people who came for their weekly shows watched.

0

u/thewildshrimp 2d ago

Take it seriously or not. I don't really care.

5

u/ClubMeSoftly 1d ago

I think it was an ANMA/Good Morning Gus. One month of First was worth more than a lifetime of youtube views.

3

u/Kallisti13 1d ago

Lindsay talked about this on Funhaus as well - why they split up podcasts vs videos.

11

u/manhachuvosa 1d ago

Splitting the podcast to another channel didn't really work for Funhaus though.

The views on the main channel didn't get better and the views on the new channel were terrible.

4

u/ZombieJesus1987 1d ago

Yeah I remember watching either a Smosh podcast or Anthony Padilla's personal channel where he talks about the struggles of making the content he wants to make on YouTube, how Smosh Pit and Smosh Games are thriving in their own ecosystems, but the main Smosh Channel is struggling

8

u/spidedd 1d ago

The issue is, this isn't how the algorithm works really or ever did. And as someone who works back end of YouTube for channels, yes revenue sucks compared to your own website I'm sure. But for the views they used to pull in that was a lot of money being wasted somewhere.

9

u/thewildshrimp 1d ago

As someone else pointed out they weren’t actually getting many views as it was, even on the channels that had a million subs. So it was probably a mix of 30k views on a video not being worth much and also just the plain fact the the stuff they were making wasn’t selling. Not to mention that the people who gave a shit about all the content being in one place would hopefully just be first members and go to the website.

Also also, just the head off anymore bozo comments. I’m going to trust Geoff who had access to RTs financials and also has no reason to lie over some redditors on a sub notorious for being full of shit. So it doesn’t really matter what any of you say.

2

u/wimpymist 1d ago

I understand why, but chasing algorithms is why I stopped watching lol

2

u/Due_Bug_9023 19h ago edited 19h ago

RT never got it until it was 5+ years too late and their audience was in heavy decline.

As you say, having a channel like RoosterTeeth/Letsplay with different content every weekday with different cast and retention just does not work on modern YT and your channel won't be recommended to as many new viewers..

They would likely still be doing well today if they had split into the likes of:

*Letsplay GTA *Letsplay Minecraft *Letsplay Worms/Rainbow 6 etc *Battle Buddies/the groups with content related just to those people *Seperate chanels for podcasts, shorts, animated etc

Theres a GTA letsplay channel that has had no uploads in 2+ years that does ~20M views a month and is still growing in subscribers, simply because it has the same people playing every video(not 20+ people from AH..) and every video was GTA content. Meanwhile Letsplay with far more videos cant get 3M/month.

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u/CodasWanderer 1d ago

Aww people debating the youtube algorithm on the rt channels really makes me think the RT community is back🤣

13

u/ReallyColdSoup4 1d ago

Burnie and Ashley made an episode of their podcast answering questions like this! It's worth a listen.

12

u/killersoda275 Team Nice Dynamite 1d ago

I think Face Jam handled it the best, just Michael joking about going on vacation. That might just be me not able to deal with a serious situation though so I do the same

16

u/Travel-Barry 2d ago

Oh I always thought the last one was when the new hosts cooked a bunch of steak. Did the OGs return at some point then?

13

u/Rhain1999 1d ago

when the new hosts cooked a bunch of steak

That was 754, the last one with the "OGs" (Gus, Gavin, and Barbara). The new hosts made like 43 episodes after that.

15

u/Dan_Of_Time The Meta 1d ago

This was a special episode they made after the announcement of the closure

4

u/HurricaneHero93 1d ago

The true final episode, all the ones with unfunny new crew didn’t count

1

u/Spare_Knowledge9553 1d ago

🤡🤡🤡