michaejones:

You know what? This price increase really had me thinking about what we’re even paying for with a FIRST membership. Is it worth the price? What are we really getting?

If you go onto rooster teeth and go to Series > FIRST Exclusives, this is the list you get:

That’s 31 shows. Okay, pretty decent. However… 10 of these are post shows, so usually only add 10-20 minutes to their original episode (worth noting that 5 of those post shows are inactive). I’m not sure if that makes FIRST worth it, but at least theres still 21 more exclusive shows to choose from! But wait a second…?

Inactive Exclusives: (and their last air date)

SP7 Bloopers: March 2019 BUT SP7 has been cancelled

SP7 Let’s Pine: November 2017 & again… cancelled.

Club Club: December 2018 (not that bad but no news about if it’s coming back?)

Class of 198x: March 2018

Funhaus’s Esports Ejects: Feb. 2018

Podcast Let’s Play: Feb. 2018

Cow Chop Theatre Mode: 2017

Barbara Vlogs: 2017

Relationship Goals: 2017

Let’s Play Live on Tour: 2017, but they also aren’t on a tour so there’s no way they can make more atm lol

First Member Vlogs: 2016

Day 5: 2016 – this series is one season long and very good, but it was also only recently re-added to the site after being broadcasted on a TV network… so it’s not at all fair to say this is a FIRST exclusive.

RT Sponsor Cut: 2016

Rest of Funhaus: 2015

That’s a total of 14 inactive FIRST exclusives. Added with the Post Shows, that’s 24 FIRST exclusives. I almost counted The Woods as a good FIRST exclusive – but that’s not even exclusive – only the behind the scenes is? I’m unsure why this is even listed in the FIRST series categories… it definitely shouldn’t be so… 25 exclusives (out of a total of 31) that IN MY OPINION aren’t worth the fee.

So what does that leave us?

6 others in the FIRST series: there’s Backwardz Compatible, Crunch Time, Theatre Mode, CRWBY & RWBY Rewind (worth noting they’re only updated during RWBY seasons), and Lazer Team (yeah, obviously inactive but it’s a movie so I’d consider it one of the FIRST perks). 

There’s also RT Docs, which is for some reason not listed anywhere on the series list. The same goes for Achievement Haunter – all except the pilot are exclusive, but the series itself isn’t marked as exclusive? So there’s a very good chance I’m missing a few other FIRST exclusives on this list (as well as extra episodes like behind the scenes of some stuff?). Their websites really weird, man. (EDIT: to add hardcore tabletop, weird place, and arizona circle - which again, isn’t listed in their fucking series list… their website isn’t even organized good)

That’s 5-7 (with docs and haunter) current and active shows, and 5 active post shows. That’s all FIRST gets you content-wise. 

In addition to that - you get access to live streams (which is the best part of first imo), and “ad-free” watching on the site, even though they shove ad reads down your throat at every second… it’s even started in non-podcast shows like AHWU). FIRST also gets you early access to all their content - but only 1-7 days earlier than the public. You also get a small discount at the RT store and discounted shipping prices. And to top it all off - they raised their annual price from 35$ to 60$, without really changing any of the perks or giving us a reason except to “ensure that we can keep making cool stuff for our awesome community“, or as to why now, all of the sudden, they’re almost doubling their prices.

But hey - at least you’ll get a cool star next to your name whenever you comment on their site.

And you know what? I knew there wasn’t that many perks to their content before but I genuinely wanted to support them more directly and was happily giving them my money… but I cannot justify that big of a price jump for honestly such little content that isn’t free for the public. And it’s honestly just such a shame - i spent my teens watching them, and as soon as I got my first min wage job I was so excited to finally be able to support them through FIRST.

And look, I get it - a company grows, they have more employees to pay and more shows to fund and need more money… I get that. But for the overall quantity and quality of their content AND their website itself is not worth 6$ a month.

And I wish I was angry about this, but in all honesty - im just genuinely disappointed in them; their inability to spread the upcoming changes (i only received 2 emails today, one of which was incorrect - i didnt even know matt posted a journal weeks ago.. who even checks that?); and most of all: their lack of response to their community every single time they fuck up.

theyre a company they just want your money & to justify it with parasocial relationships you have the right to be angry