#also funhaus is still pretty good -- though definitely not the same

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

so rooster teeth is shutting down. wild. that company was such a big part of my adolescence. i haven't watched their shit in years and i am not really surprised by the new but still it's a bit sad.

it's been a long, slow death. personally, i choose to remember it as it was, not what it became. rt has been dead to me for a long time. this is just the final nail in the coffin.

it's the end of an era.

was a good run!

[sovereign-of-the-castle]

i'm not really familiar with much of the let's play family outside AH and i was wondering what the thing is with cow chop and the creatures? do they not like each other or? i tried googling it but just confused myself even more :/

Hi there! I’m so sorry that I didn’t see this in my inbox so idk when you sent it, but I’ll do my best to give a concise and unbiased explanation of what went down. 

So, Cow Chop is consisted primarily of Aleks and James with a bunch of other consistent guests/employees including Joe, Trevor, Brett, Anna, and Asher. Aron was working with them but doesn’t anymore. (I’m a little spotty on the details, I can only assume it was because they ended up moving from Littleton, CO to LA and he didn’t want to move, but that’s just speculation and I’ll try and refrain from that anymore my b)

Cow Chop is a co-op gaming and other random stuff channel that has been an idea between James (also known on YT as UberHaxorNova) and Aleks (also known as ImmortalHD) for a long time. In March of 2016, in one of the Creature Hub weekly videos, James said that a special project would be announced soon, and held up a cow print pillow (x) 

Two weeks-ish later, a video was uploaded on the channel Cow Chop, and it was announced that this was a new project that was happening (x)

It was pretty obvious to the fans that a change was occurring, and it seemed that James and Aleks were splitting from The Creatures to do Cow Chop. This was addressed and confirmed when they did a stream towards the end of April 2016 (x)

It was also confirmed in the stream that Joe and Aron would also be leaving The Creatures. They made note that everyone was given a choice and no one was forced to leave to go with them. James explained that Joe had come out to Colorado for him and was adamant that he’d be going where James went, in this case it was Cow Chop. Aron was originally going to work for both Cow Chop and The Creatures, on the later he’d be in charge of their website. After they partnered with Let’s Play/RT though, that job was kinda obsolete so he was full time with CC. 

James and Aleks both cited their primary reasons for leaving the Creatures to be a lack of creative freedom, lack of proper management, a general lack of power within the company, and overall different opinions on how things needed to be run. 

The stream was professional, light, and generally easy-going. Both James and Aleks were very honest and again, professional, in how they explained what occurred and why they chose to leave. I’d definitely suggest watching the stream to really understand why they left. 

The Creatures put out a send off video in similar fashion to others they had done for other members who had left (x) an example of another time they did this was for Seamus (x)

Generally after splitting, they never talked about The Creatures. If I were to give my opinion, I think that in general most splits are going to leave some open wounds and hurt feelings, which probably happened in this case. 

They also needed to really separate themselves from The Creatures, the two groups are not at all affiliated with each other outside of both being in the Lets Play family. 

Then some other things happened. 

There was a lot of fan backlash, mostly centered on The Creatures. Another employee, Dex, had quit them not long before Cow Chop split. He released a video explaining why he left. In a much more emotionally charged and frustrated way, he cited some of the same problems James and Aleks did primarily management and a lack of power. He also mentioned clarity on what he was meant to do there and being censored as problems. He also directly called out Jordan (Kootra) for his actions. (x)

The fans took this video and Cow Chop leaving and since then there are comments on every Creatures video that are rude and calling shit out and making assumptions and just are just generally really negative. You can look at literally any of their videos over the last year and see what I’m talking about. 

They’ve also lost a lot of subs and so many views. They’re averaging around 20-30 thousand views per video when before Cow Chop left, they were in the hundreds of thousands at the minimum. It’s actually astounding how many views they’ve lost. 

It was revealed that Jordan is dating Stefani, one of The Creatures employees, and someone asked what James thought, he said something akin to “it was a huge part of why I left” and Aleks said in a stream that James had been serious. I don’t want to link anything, it’s drama and people need to leave it alone. If you want to find it, look for yourself, I don’t even really want to talk about it but whatever. 

That led to more backlash, fans defending The Creatures, hating on them, saying that Cow Chop is better off, or that they betrayed the Creatures, saying that Cow Chop shouldn’t have left, that it was a good change, so on and so forth. 

The fans have been making assumptions and trying to get both parties to say things but they obviously have chosen not to. 

This has led to incidents like James leaving his stream after “fans” being gross (x) and asking shit about Jordan and Stefani, people asking about it at their RTX panels (x) (there are more examples of that I’m only linking the one thought) (which they explicitly asked people not to do), and just generally gross, creepy, and rude and not respecting their boundaries. 

We as fans are not owed any more information and explanation then we’ve already gotten. They gave us the stream, said that they’re separate, and that’s all we needed to hear. 

These people were/are friends and deserve to have their privacy. If it was a bad split in any way, that is their business and we don’t have to filled in on every little detail.

We don’t know if they’re still friends or if they hate each other or if they’re neutral and it’s none. of. our. goddamn. business. 

I get it that people love them, I love them, that the split was rough and it’s hard to not have answers but we aren’t owed them. 

So, to reiterate another post I’ve made, respect their boundaries at their panels. 

Brett announced during the most recent CCTV podcast that he’d be on a panel with Geoff (from AH), Bruce (from Funhaus) and Jordan (x), please, please, please no one be the asshole that asks Brett and Jordan about the split. Don’t do it. Don’t ask at that panel or at any of the other panels. 

Respect these people. End of story. 

I hope this explains everything? Please, anyone add on if I’m missing anything, thanks