The infamous Rooster Teeth controversy came around in 2019, freezing the production company in its tracks. Through anonymous Glassdoor reviews and public social media posts, several Rooster Teeth employees talked about experiencing harassment, discrimination, racism, and compulsory overtime while working at the company. As a result, Rooster Teeth apologized, changed its corporate structure, and employed business groups to address DEI.

At Business2Community, we’ve reviewed news articles, tweets, Glassdoor reviews, subreddits, and press releases to compile the Rooster Teeth controversy events in one place. In this article, you’ll find out about what Rooster Teeth employees have said, how the company reacted, and why Rooster Teeth was eventually shut down. These will provide you with business lessons related to the importance of employee experience and work culture.

Rooster Teeth Controversy – Key Facts

  • From 2019 onwards, both current and former employees accused Rooster Teeth of being a toxic workplace, including allegations of racism, transphobia, homophobia, and harassment.
  • Rooster Teeth released an apology statement in 2022, highlighting changes in management, HR, and corporate teams.
  • Due to various reasons, Rooster Teeth shut down in 2024.

The Story of the Rooster Teeth Controversy

Both through Glassdoor’s anonymous reviews and public social media posts, Rooster Teeth employees accused the company of being a toxic workplace. The complaints mentioned low pay, harassment, crunch culture (compulsory overtime), racism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Brief History of Rooster Teeth

Known for its popular web series, podcasts, entertainment, and gaming content, Rooster Teeth was founded in 2003 by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman. The company gained initial fame with Red vs Blue, its first web series set in the Halo universe. Since then, Rooster Teeth produced science fiction movies like Lazer Team, sketches like Let’s Play, YouTube channels like Slow Mo Guys, and podcasts like the Rooster Teeth Podcast.

In 2014, eleven years after its founders created Rooster Teeth, the company was acquired by Fullscreen. Then, in 2018, Otter Media, a joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group, bought Fullscreen, thus Rooster Teeth. Otter Media’s parent company AT&T also owned WarnerMedia. After WarnerMedia spun off AT&T and merged with Discovery, Rooster Teeth became a subsidiary of Warner Bros Discovery.

In March 2024, Rooster Teeth announced it would shut down. General Manager Jordan Levin released a statement, saying that the reasons behind Rooster Teeth’s closure were challenges in the digital media industry and changes in consumer behavior and monetization.

Anonymous Employee Reviews on Rooster Teeth’s Toxic Work Culture

Throughout its 21-year history, Rooster Teeth was involved in several controversies.

In 2019, after the company laid off 13% of its workforce, its current and former employees started leaving anonymous Glassdoor reviews about the company’s poor working conditions. The reviews included crunch culture, unpaid overtime, bad management, lack of career advancement, and low pay.

Anonymous 2019 Glassdoor review from an employee, criticizing Rooster Teeth

Public Criticisms of Rooster Teeth’s Work Culture, Racism, and Homophobia

In June 2020, black actress Mica Burton tweeted that her departure from Rooster Teeth was due to the company’s work environment. Her announcement came two weeks after the murder of George Floyd, and was a part of broader racial injustice discussions.

Her father, actor LeVar Burton quote-tweeted her statement, supporting his daughter and highlighting Rooster Teeth’s racist work environment.

In 2022, Mica Burton gave more details about the racism she experienced at work, such as seeing the n-word written on a whiteboard. She mentioned she was still healing from her time at Rooster Teeth, which was between 2016 and 2018.

On the same day as Burton’s 2022 tweet, another former Rooster Teeth employee, Kdin Jenzen, posted on TwitLonger. Her 2,000+ word post detailed her experience working for Rooster Teeth as a transgender woman. Here is a summary of the workplace abuse and discrimination she mentioned in the post:

  • 14 to 16-hour workdays: When she first started working as a content creator and editor, Jenzen’s working hours were between 7 am and 9 pm. She then got transferred to another department and started working between 7 am and 11 pm.
  • Homophobic harassment and nicknames: In her first years, her colleagues would call her “f*gg*t” in private, and “Fugz” on screen. The nickname only stopped when Jenzen came out as transgender in 2016, however, the discrimination continued.
  • Low pay: Jenzen was underpaid, at around $40,000 per year as a producer and director, while the second lowest-paid employee earned $70,000 per year.
  • HR and company founders’ comments: Jenzen stated that her complaints were ignored by HR and the company founders. According to the former employee, one of the founders said she was “too nice to work for Rooster Teeth” and that she should find another job.

Other Rooster Teeth Controversies

Voice actor Ryan Haywood and YouTuber Adam Kovic worked for Rooster Teeth’s gaming division Achievement Hunter until 2020. They left the company in October 2020 for breaking the code of conduct, according to a statement from Rooster Teeth released on Twitter.

Two days before the tweet, a Rooster Teeth fan shared a video, saying she was involved with Ryan Haywood before she was 18, although Haywood didn’t know she was a minor. She mentioned exchanging explicit photos with Haywood while he was married with children, leading to accusations of the voice actor engaging in inappropriate behavior with fans.

In a now-deleted tweet, Ryan Haywood wrote “I made mistakes and will be leaving RT to focus on rebuilding my family and life. I’m sorry to anyone I’ve hurt. I do want to say emphatically that I never did anything illegal. The consequences of my actions are mine to deal with, please stop harassing and threatening my family.”

The Consequences of the Rooster Teeth Controversy

From making public apologies to changing its management teams, Rooster Teeth took ownership of its mistakes. Here is what happened after the controversies gained momentum:

More Employees Speaking Out

After Kdin Jenzen shared her experience, other employees started speaking out. A former employee who resigned in 2020 shared that a major reason for her leaving was the sexual harassment allegations of Adam Kovic.

Another former employee tweeted about asking HR why she wasn’t paid as much as the men doing the same job, and getting the response “Sometimes you don’t get paid what you’re worth”.

Apology from Rooster Teeth

After Kdin Jenzen’s post on TwitLong, Rooster Teeth released a statement, apologizing for the hateful and harmful behavior.

Gavin Free, the creator of Slow Mo Guys, and Rooster Teeth co-founder Geoff Ramsey also publicly apologized on their Twitter accounts.

Company-Wide Changes

In its apology statement, Rooster Teeth mentioned changing its HR, upper management, and corporate oversight teams completely. By removing previous management, the company said it was working toward reducing crunch and creating better schedules for employees.

Rooster Teeth’s new leadership team created pay bands in 2020, making sure salaries met market values. The company also recognized it had paid low wages in the past, and set up tools for pay equity, paid internships, and paid overtime.

In 2021, Rooster Teeth launched six Business Resource Groups to improve its company culture and DEI efforts. These resource groups aimed to make the company a better workplace while improving its diversity.

In 2023, Rooster Teeth rebranded, introducing a new logo and tagline.

Revenue Teeth’s Closure

The controversies were not the only reason why the company shut down. There were various factors involved, according to General Manager Jordan Levin.

“Rooster Teeth’s closure isn’t merely an end; it reflects broader business dynamics. Monetization shifts, platform algorithms, advertising challenges, and the ebb and flow of patronage — all these converging factors have led to many closures in the industry. While we learn about updates on programming day by day, we will share our plans for shows, franchises, partnerships, and merch soon and share those updates with teams internally and with the community,” he wrote in a statement.

Rooster Teeth’s longtime fans had mixed opinions. Many were sad, although not surprised.

“The content has gone massively downhill and they’ve been riddled with scandal and drama,” wrote a Reddit user in the r/Games subreddit. It got over 3,000 upvotes, as other users agreed the Rooster Teeth content quality had dropped and that the company had been affected by the controversies.

Reddit post of a user, saying "Shame but hardly a surprise. The content has gone massively downhill and they've been riddled with scandal and drama."

What Can We Learn From the Rooster Teeth Controversy?

The Rooster Teeth controversy highlights the importance of prioritizing employee experience from day one. Although Rooster Teeth apologized and took action, the bad reviews and social media posts are still easily accessible online. Such reviews damage companies’ reputation, and the best way to avoid them is to create a healthy work culture from the very beginning.

For business owners, you need to make sure you have equity and inclusion embedded in your business from the beginning. No one wants negative reviews on Glassdoor or Reddit threads about their company – so ensuring you pay market rates, you have policies in place to prevent racism, homophobia, and transphobia, should get your business off to a solid start.

While Rooter Teeth dealt with the controversy with reviews and wide-ranging changes, it still took a reputational hit for letting these issues fester in the first place. Take away from this story of HR controversy that you should embed a positive company culture from the very beginning.

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