The label's sale to Warner Music Group (WMG) was completed late 2012 and Roadrunner has been forced to downsize significantly since. This culimnated in officially shutting down Roadrunner offices in Canada, the UK, Germany, and Australia.

Label founder and ceo Cees Wessel has stepped down, and approximately thirty-six staff members have been fired worldwide.

Roadrunner will continue to have personnel in every territory it does currently, with the exception of the Netherlands office, which is being shuttered.

Within the next few weeks, many Roadrunner bands will be dropped and left to find new labels with Warner taking just the bigger more cost effective (mainstream) bands like Nickelback and Kravitz.

Trivium's Matt Heafy took to Twitter to voice his disgust stating:

"I wish I knew who or what to blame specifically, and chew off it's heads - but Roadrunner records just fired some of their best employees. I don't know if it's corporate greed or it's due to the fact that no one puts value in physical art and that piracy created a domino effect. But our friends who are being tossed away so quickly by the label are now out of jobs. These people helped bands get where they are today."

Arch Enemy vocalist Angela Gossow made the following statement upon hearing the news:

"Labels don't make money with selling metal music anymore. Labels first cut down their offices and staff, then they will drop all the artists who don't sell cds anymore. Metal bands are the first to go. It's a small niche compared to mainstream music. Bands have no label support anymore, thus won't get any tour support, so they cannot go out and build a live profile / make a name as a good live band anymore. The only real income for a band these days."

Roadrunner Records history
Cees Wessels founded the record label in the Netherlands in 1980, initially as Roadracer Records.

By 1986, the label had an office in the USA and then quickly expanded to the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, Denmark and Canada.

The label release classic metal albums such as King Diamond's 'Fatal Portrait', Obituary's 'Slowly We Rot' and Sepultura's 'Beneath the Remains', Type O Negative's 'Bloody Kisses', Death's 'Human', DevilDriver's 'The The Fury of Our Maker's Hand', Slipknot's 'Iowa' and Opeth's 'Ghost Reveries' to name but a few.

Roadrunner Records celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2005 with the project Roadrunner United - The All-Star Sessions. Four team captains were chosen to lead 57 artists from 45 past and present Roadrunner bands, and produce and oversee 18 tracks for a one-of-a-kind album: Joey Jordison (Slipknot, Murderdolls), Matt Heafy (Trivium), Dino Cazares (Fear Factory, Asesino, Divine Heresy, Brujeria) and Robert Flynn (Machine Head, Vio-lence, Forbidden).

In December 2006 Warner Music acquired a majority stake in the label and in November 2010 bought the remainder of the business. Cees Wessels stayed on as ceo but has now departed.