Critical Role Productions

Critical Role Productions, LLC is an American multimedia production company incorporated in 2015 by the members of the creator-owned streaming show Critical Role. The company's first two shows, Critical Role and Talks Machina, originally premiered on Geek & Sundry. The company moved to its own studio space in 2018 and began producing new shows on its Twitch and YouTube channels. A split from Legendary Digital Networks was completed in early 2019, at which point Critical Role Productions took over production responsibility. Since then, the company has continued to launch new shows independently.

Critical Role Productions operates under several trade names for different forms of media, including the gaming imprint Darrington Press, the record label Scanlan Shorthalt Music, and the film and television production banner Metapigeon. In 2020, they established the Critical Role Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, to manage the company's charity projects. In 2023, Critical Role Productions signed a first-look film and television deal with Amazon Studios, and in 2024, they launched a boutique subscription streaming service called Beacon.

Critical Role Productions was founded by the members of the creator-owned Dungeons & Dragons streaming show Critical Role in 2015. The group had originally begun playing at home in 2012. Felicia Day approached them about live-streaming their game on Geek & Sundry after learning about their private tabletop role-playing game from Ashley Johnson. To streamline the game's mechanics for the show, its characters were converted from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition before the web series began airing on March 12, 2015. The company's first show, Critical Role, was a success. The company's second show, Talks Machina, premiered on Geek & Sundry and Alpha, Legendary Digital Networks' subscription streaming service, in 2016.

In June 2018, Critical Role launched its own Twitch and YouTube channels, with cast member Marisha Ray announced as the creative director of the franchise. The company then began self-producing new shows and content that did not air on Geek & Sundry's channels. The sets for Critical Role and Talks Machina moved from Legendary Digital Network's studios to Critical Role's own studios in July 2018.

The eight founders—the cast members of Critical Role―are the owners of equity stakes in the company. Since 2019, Travis Willingham has served as Chief Executive Officer, Matthew Mercer as Chief Creative Officer, and Marisha Ray as Creative Director. Several senior Legendary Digital staff members joined Critical Role during the split: Ed Lopez, head of digital strategy and operations, became chief operating officer; Rachel Romero, vice president of marketing, took on the role of senior vice president of marketing; and Ben Van Der Fluit was appointed senior vice president of business development.

Critical Role's split from Geek & Sundry and Legendary Digital Networks was completed in February 2019. From this point, Critical Role took over production responsibility for the Critical Role and Talks Machina shows, with live broadcasts and video on demand (VOD) now airing exclusively on Critical Role's own channels. The disengagement from Legendary's streaming service Alpha led to the cancellation of Talks Machina: After Dark, which had been exclusive to the service. Some legacy episodes—including the entirety of the first campaign, the first nineteen episodes of the second campaign, and the corresponding episodes of official discussion show Talks Machina—remained available in Geek & Sundry's archives on YouTube and Twitch. Starting in December 2019, some older content was migrated from Geek & Sundry to Critical Role's channels.

On March 4, 2019, Critical Role launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a 22-minute animation called Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special. The final total raised by the Kickstarter when it closed on April 19, 2019, was $11.3 million, allowing the intended animated special to be expanded into a ten-episode animated series. When the campaign closed, it was one of the fastest-funded projects in Kickstarter history and held the record for the most funded Kickstarter campaign for TV and film projects. In November 2019, Amazon Prime Video announced that it had acquired the streaming rights to The Legend of Vox Machina, and had commissioned fourteen additional episodes—two more for the first season, and a second season consisting of twelve episodes. The project was originally slated for release in late 2020, but was delayed until 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In September 2019, Critical Role announced that it had negotiated licensing agreements with Funko, McFarlane Toys, Penguin Random House, and Ripple Junction to produce merchandise such as apparel and collectibles. On October 3, it aired a sponsored one-shot using the Feast of Legends RPG system, developed by fast-food chain Wendy's. Following a strong negative response from some fans, the Critical Role team removed the VOD, and announced via Twitter that they had donated their profits from the sponsorship. Shelly Jones, in an essay in the book Watch Us Roll (2021), speculated that the decision may have been made by the show's development team to deflect criticism about the "failed experiment". In the first half of 2020, a claim was made online that Critical Role had retained the services of a sensitivity reader, but had not paid the individual. As a result, the company called in outside counsel to investigate the claim. Whilst the investigation concluded the investigation in Critical Role's favor, the person who made the original claim tweeted that they had not been contacted during the investigation.