Online Media Company Acquires Rooster Teeth

Rooster Teeth have been busy. Yet, despite their packed schedule of using record-breaking Kickstarter funds to film a full-length feature or releasing their first mobile game or starting an e-sports news show or opening a merchandise section at Toy Joy, they’re apparently being purchased by millennial-centric YouTube network Fullscreen.

This purchase doesn’t seem strange from Fullscreen’s perspective; the company has been focussed on the millennial market and, a few month's back, purchased ScrewAttack, a gaming-culture video site. Sound familiar? Yes, ScrewAttack and Rooster Teeth are kindred spirits, and it would seem Fullscreen is looking to corner the younger demographics’ time spent watching their many screens.

Rooster Teeth, on the other hand, is a grassroots organization that found early success with its Red v. Blue series. The company’s independent ethos and unique content created a loyal fan base that comes out by the tens of thousands every year for the RTX festival. Those same fans quickly decried the announcement of the acquisition on the Rooster Teeth website as blasphemous, worrying the identity of the company was in jeopardy. Creative Director Burnie Burns said on the company's site, “For me personally, this means I get to re-focus on what I love: telling stories in new and exciting ways.” Burns hit his point home in response to one of the comments on his post saying, “We love what we do as well. This is going to let us do so much more of it;” the implication being that Fullscreen will not interfere with the creative direction of Rooster Teeth.

According to Fullscreen’s YouTube page their various channels have a total of 450 million subscribers. Add to that Rooster Teeth’s nearly 8 million subscribers and you almost have every single person in the coveted 18-34 demographic. OK, maybe not quite that many, but Fullscreen’s devotion to keeping up with trends in Web-video consumption by young people is unparalleled. With Rooster Teeth’s heart and Fullscreen’s distribution architecture the team could make for an unstoppable force in the post-television world.