Do you think Brownman Ray may have seen the writing on the wall there?
I definitely think this was a factor of his quitting and permanently moving to Twitch, but not the main one. To my knowledge - and take all this with a grain of salt, because this was told to me by someone close to RT staff, so I have no direct sources - this is what happened (and I apologize if this gets long):
He was suppressed by RT for quite a while, as if I recall correctly, he started taking off on Twitch in a big way when it first became a major streaming platform and began making a good amount of money on the side. Rooster Teeth called it a violation of his contract, as I'm guessing they had a noncompete clause, and seized the account, repurposing it as a general "RT" channel. The irony of this is that they would later go on to waive this, I guess, as multiple other members of RT now have Twitch channels. I think it's likely that RT didn't understand Twitch quite yet and saw it as a competing business instead of a mutually beneficial facilitator, but I also think this was a concentrated effort to put their thumb on the backs of their content creators and keep them "in line." Unsurprisingly, the timeline for this lines up with RT's acquisition by Fullscreen, as the Twitch debacle probably happened around mid-to-late 2014, and Fullscreen acquired RT the same year. Cue this:
See a lot of people pointing out they dropped Roosterteeth around 2014, can't be just a coincidence that 2014 was also the year the company got sold to Fullscreen
It's definitely not a coincidence. Shit went downhill the minute they were acquired by a faceless corporation with no practical knowledge of how their business was run.
Anyway, even though Ray was eventually able to remake his channel on Twitch, he was PISSED about the whole shebang, as I guess it was his big chance to break away from RT's increasingly oppressive work life, and it really started to show in his videos. My best example is
this clip from one of their Minecraft let's plays in 2015 (and featuring a very unfortunate "autoerotic asphyxiation" joke from Ryan), where Gavin discusses having to restart a Minecraft video, only for Ray to ask "how he's still breathing" and to say that he would've killed himself if they had to redo another Minecraft let's play, right before being interrupted and cut off by Geoff (and if you hear the way Geoff does so, it sounds like a deliberate effort to get Ray to shut up, not an accident).
If you've watched Ray's content at all, you can tell he's definitely not acting like his usual self - generally he has a pretty fun and lighthearted energy, with frequent commentary, but in this video he is very quiet, hardly cracks jokes or laughs except in a sardonic way, and what few "jokes" he does make are incredibly mean-spirited and just make him sound miserable (which he probably was). He acts like this in pretty much every RT video he was in post-Twitch debacle, which would've been most videos at the end of 2014 and nearly every video he was in during 2015. The clip I linked is also one or two videos before Ray's "official" send-off, so I definitely think this was the end of the line for him. It's clear that he knew early on he was going to quit, but I can't remember when he "officially" announced his resignation.
Does RoosterTeeth pay off creators? I find it more scary how no one seems to be talking about this shit besides randoms on Twitter. Projared had what a handful of photos leaked and was dragged through the mud with memes and youtubers talking about him. His audience is/was minuscule compared to RT. If you go on Youtube no big drama channel or anyone of significance is saying anything.
There are miscellaneous posts about it on Twitter and Tumblr, but yeah, I think that most of the people actually working at RT are bogged down by NDAs, especially now that RT has been acquired by a "proper" business (Fullscreen, and then Warner Media after they absorbed Otter Media). If the e-celebs there could share their true opinions on the matter, I think they would, but I can imagine there'd be a LOT of conflicting info making the situation more messy and harder to follow (again, like the ProJared situation, as those guys DIDN'T have an NDA and it showed). RT is also pretty likely to have actual PR agents now unlike in the past, so it's probably a more prudent business move to hang back and stay quiet about this while they get their ducks in a row instead of coming out swinging for the rafters and screwing themselves over down the line.
This tack they're recently taking seems like the polar opposite of how they used to approach controversy back in the day. I immediately think of the CTH fiasco, especially because in that case,
Michael Jones DID publicly snap at Gavin for it - live on a podcast, too. (Watch until about 52:22, but they argue about it for a good couple minutes after.) The fact that they left this in the video leads me to believe that Michael was "allowed" to do this, as I think they'd cut it or otherwise stifle it if they hadn't wanted it to be published. Normally I'd just chalk this up to a PR stunt to make their company seem more "woke," but a few things make me believe otherwise:
a) Gavin still showed little regret for the situation, which was the big reason people were upset with him at the time; b) Michael looks and sounds genuinely creeped out by and pissed with him in this clip, in spite of them (apparently) being close friends, and c), Gavin seems REALLY uncomfortable and jittery, and sort of turns to look at Gus (who I guess spearheads the podcasts?) for help the moment Michael mentions him "following girls in his car." All of those things lead me to believe there's a little more to this conversation than a simple PR stunt. (And, notably, this podcast happened well before the Fullscreen acquisition.)
It's just such a stark contrast to how they're handling things nowadays, and in all honesty, I consider that a little more admirable than this quiet unpersoning of Ryan and Adam that they're doing.