Rooster Teeth returns from the dead, under the ownership of one of its original founders

It was a loss of a genuine online institution when Warner Bros. announced in 2024 that it was closing Rooster Teeth, the online production company that got its start in 2003 with the Halo-based comedy machinima Red vs. Blue. But less than a year later, original co-founder Burnie Burns says he's acquired the rights to the brand "and much of its remaining assets," and he's bringing it back.

"Almost one year ago, we were all saddened to learn that Rooster Teeth would be shutting its doors," Burns wrote in a message that's now up on the Rooster Teeth website. "Today, I am very happy to say that I have completed an acquisition of the Rooster Teeth brand and many of its remaining properties."

Burns said the details of the deal are too much for "a letter of a website," and so urged readers to check out the February 5 episode of the Morning Somewhere podcast. In it, he emphasized that he has acquired "very specifically the Rooster Teeth brand," and that some shows and properties associated with it, some of which went back to their creators when Rooster Teeth was closed last year, are not part of the deal.

"Our focus in this acquisition was the Rooster Teeth channels, meaning the website, the YouTube channel, all the social media accounts, and then all the shows therein," Burns said during the podcast. A list of those shows will be provided at some point in the future, and a Q&A for supporters of the Morning Somewhere Patreon will be held this weekend, and then published publicly on Monday. The resurrected Rooster Teeth will feature the return of some old shows as well as "new stuff," with production up and running by this summer.

"I learned about the term 'enshittification'—I know it's been around for a while," Burns said. "But if you listen to the podcast, you know that my son taught me about this term. And boy, it really hit for me last year because of everything that was going on with AI, everything from generative content all the way to AI influencers and just not being able to tell what's going on on the internet, and constantly feeling every single day that the internet is getting worse. And so our plan for 2025 is to de-shittify our little corner of the internet, and this is one of the first steps we're making in order to do that."

It's still early in the process—Burns said in the podcast that the reconstituted Rooster Teeth currently only has two employees, himself and Ashley Burns—and it remains to be seen how it all shakes out. But while Rooster Teeth may not have the cultural cachet it held back in its glory days, there's a lot of enthusiasm for its return. As something of an online elder myself, it's great to see the old dog get new life—and a little bit of "de-shittification" sounds like a pretty great idea to me too.

This remains one of my faves: