Ryan Haywood Rooster Teeth controversy: what happened to Achievement Hunter star?

Ryan Haywood is a man with many caps on: he is an actor, voice actor, on-camera host/on-screen talent and content producer, video game journalist, Twitch streamer, and internet personality.

Although he gained widespread fame for his work at Rooster Teeth on Twitch, he has now been embroiled in a huge scandal. As such, his life and career have suffered a huge hit and may never recover after he was accused of varying degrees of sexual wrongdoing.

The ripple effect of this scandal is hard to properly quantify given that Haywood keeps the majority of his private life to himself. Career-wise though, the consequences have been brutal.

Top 10 facts about Ryan Haywood

1. Ryan Harwood was born with James being his first name, but his parents called him Ryan as a tribute to his great-grandfather.
2. Haywood was born on 6 December 1980, and he is 41 years old in 2021.
3. Ryan Haywood is married to a veterinarian named Laurie Higginbotham, and they have two children.
4. The internet personality worked as a model when he was younger.
5. He attended the University of Georgia, where he earned a degree in Theatre and Computer Animation.
6. Haywood joined Rooster Teeth after finding the job advertisement on Craigslist.
7. After an attempt to return to Twitch in 2021, the platform banned Haywood permanently.
8. Ryan Haywood has since disappeared from all social media platforms.
9. Haywood was accused of sexually grooming underage Rooster Teeth fans.
10. Haywood’s first credited video for Achievement Hunter was titled “A Video Game Tour of NYC”, and it was uploaded to Rooster Teeth YouTube channel in 2011.

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Early life

Ryan Haywood has starred in many Rooster Teeth productions including “Rooster Teeth Shorts”, “Immersion”, “Million Dollars”, “But…”, “The Gauntlet”, “Ten and Eleven Little Roosters”, and many others.

Although he has achieved quite a number of feats, questions on people’s minds include: how did this public figure start his journey in life? What experiences shaped him, and what is his family was like?

Much of Haywood’s private life has been kept under wraps, but there’s still many details available to the public. For example, we found that he was actually born as James Ryan Haywood, with James being his first name. But as a tribute to his great-grandfather, his parents referred to him by his middle name Ryan, and this name stuck. He was born on 6 December 1980 in Columbus, Georgia, to David L. Edwards and Debbie Hoover.

Haywood has two older siblings, a sister named Tanya Edwards and an older brother named Ryan Edwards.

Everyone from his family bears the same last name except for Haywood, and it is unclear why. It is unknown whether this internet personality adopted this name as a stage name or if he changed his last name sometime during his life.

Haywood grew up in Columbus, Georgia, with his family. In high school, he worked as a male model, appearing in the magazine Twist. This info was unearthed in one of his videos titled “Let’s Play – 7 Days to Die Part 3”.

Fans were very curious to see the pictures from this time in Ryan’s life, and raised 200 thousand dollars ($200,000) to get access to them. The money was raised during an Extra Livestream, and afterwards, the pictures from the magazine were released.

The details showed that not only did Haywood pose for Twist magazine, he also appeared on a runway show in Italy where he was a gnome who stood on a mushroom. His modelling days did not last very long, however.

After high school, Haywood attended Full Sail University, where he graduated with a degree in Computer Animation. He also took further classes in computer engineering, computer science, broadcast, and theatre at Georgia Southern University.

Personal life – wife and children

When Ryan Haywood was still in high school, he met his current wife, Laurie Higginbotham, who is now a veterinary doctor. The high school sweethearts got married in 2007, and they welcomed their first child, a boy named Eli, in 2011. In late 2013, a baby girl named Olivia joined the family.

Haywood, a proud father, has shown off his children on his streams, back when he was still with Rooster Teeth, of course. Nothing else is known about Haywood’s family except that they live in Austin, Texas, where they moved to because of Haywood’s work with Rooster Teeth.

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Career

Ryan Haywood had a brief career in modelling before he found a craigslist ad in March 2011 that made him join Rooster Teeth and eventually changed his life. He had to drive to Austin, Texas, multiple times so that the company could ensure that he was passionate about the position.

Rooster Teeth is an American video production company headquartered in Austin, Texas, founded in 2003 and owned by Otter Media. Otter Media is actually a subsidiary of WarnerMedia Sales and Distribution, a division of AT&T’s WarnerMedia.

He was eventually hired in June of the same year and started as a part-time worker. During this time, he ran, managed, oversaw and edited shows, videos, and content/series for the now-defunct “Game Fails” YouTube channel. He also worked as a behind the scenes tech guy.

Haywood worked remotely as well because he lived three hours away from Austin, where the company’s office was. Eventually, he uprooted his life and moved to Austin from Corpus Cristi when he was hired as a full-time employee. He began working as a machinima animator, animation and VFX editor, and technical director for “Red vs. Blue”.

After Haywood started working on “Red vs. Blue”, a series primarily known for its humour and storytelling, he started incorporating high-level animated fight scenes into the videos. Additionally, he joined the sub-division of Rooster Teeth called Achievement Hunter. Under this subdivision, the first video that Haywood made was titled “A video game tour of NYC”.

He lent his voice to his very first voice production, a Witcher achievement guide titled “The Witcher 2: Librarian Achievement Guide”. Meanwhile, Haywood continued to appear in Rooster Teeth videos and work on the company’s animated videos.

In 2012, Haywood transitioned fully to Achievement Hunter. He has voiced several roles while working for the division including that of Professor Peter Port, a character in “RWBY”, and several characters in many seasons of “Red vs. Blue”.

On 30 April 2016, he started streaming on Twitch under the name SortaMaliciousGaming. Haywood goes by many names such as Iron Ryan, The Mad King, Ryan the Guy, Rye Bread, SortaMaliciousGaming, The Vagabond, and BM Vagabond.

Ryan Haywood controversy

Ryan Haywood’s career hit a snag after several allegations of sexual misconduct were levelled against him. The accusations ranged from online solicitation to statutory rape as a girl came forward with allegations that she was sexually involved with Haywood even when she was as young as 17.

A Reddit user even created a spreadsheet of the allegations. Although, the majority of the cases happened between 2016 and 2019, some of them date as far back as 2004.

Haywood has been accused of being sexually involved with several people, some of them minors, and the majority of them while he was married. 

One girl named Tessa Graves shared a YouTube video detailing her own incident. She said that she met Haywood when he was 36, and she was 17. However, she admitted that she lied about her age, telling Haywood that she was 18 at the time, and she also alleged that they dated on and off for two years. In addition, Graves claimed the two of them exchanged several nude pictures and that Haywood offered to pay for a hotel for her to visit him.

Many other women have come forward, with some revealing their names while others have chosen to remain unknown.

What happened to Ryan Haywood?

After the allegations were made public, Haywood took to Twitter to reveal that he was leaving Rooster Teeth. In his tweet, he admitted that he made some mistakes and apologised to those he had hurt. He, however, went to great lengths to emphasise that he hadn’t done anything illegal.

He stated that he would take full responsibility for his actions and asked people to stop sending his family threats.

“I made mistakes and will be leaving [Rooster Teeth] to focus on rebuilding my family and life. I’m sorry to anyone I’ve hurt. I do want to say emphatically that I never did anything illegal. The consequences of my actions are mine to deal with, please stop harassing and threatening my family,” he wrote.

After Haywood left Rooster Teeth, his co-workers Michael Jones and Jack Pattillo took to Twitch to make a statement on the situation, assuring fans that they would wipe all traces of Ryan Haywood from the platform.

“I have to apologise to the community. I’m sorry we’ve let you down. I’m sorry this happened. Please understand how crushed we are too. Every single story, everything I’ve read, every report that’s come out, it’s a punch to the gut,” Patillo said.

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Why did Twitch ban Haywood?

In January 2021, which was a few months after Haywood was accused of grooming young Rooster Teeth fans, having sexual liaisons with them, and cheating on his wife, the streamer attempted to return to Twitch.

He sent messages to his Twitch subscribers informing them of his intentions to return to the platform. However, his former Rooster Teeth co-workers sent messages to Twitch, calling attention to the allegations and urging Twitch to deplatform him, which they did.

What is Ryan Haywood doing now?

In Ryan Haywood’s tweet, he stated that he wanted to take time off to work on his family. The timeline of the allegations indicates that Haywood was also cheating on his wife with young Rooster Teeth fans.

The two have been very private about their relationship, so much that not many fans know what Haywood’s wife looks like, even though he regularly showed off their children.

Because of this, it is unknown whether the two are still together or not and seeing as neither of them has said anything about the breakdown of their relationship, it is assumed that the two are working on fixing their relationship.

Since the animator and streamer was banned from Twitch in January 2021, not much has been heard from him this year. Haywood has deleted all his social media accounts and completely disappeared from the internet.

Some people think that Haywood has left the social media space to focus on himself and take accountability for his actions while others don’t believe that he will change.

Conclusion

Ryan Haywood was an animator, actor, voice actor, and Twitch streamer who had a thriving career before being hit with a scandal that seems to have ended his career.

Haywood rose through the ranks at Rooster Teeth quickly thanks to his talent as a host and animator. However, because of his actions, his career took a nosedive. Whether he will be able to recover from this or not is anyone’s guess.

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