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When Google’s YouTube video division confirmed 100 layoffs on Wednesday, Leo Olebe, who was head of YouTube Gaming, was amongst these let go.
Olebe was a longtime gaming government who had additionally accomplished stints at Fb (Meta), the place he was senior world director for recreation partnerships. He was laid off amongst 100 different staff on the video platform as half of a bigger restructuring at Google that included greater than 1,000 different layoffs.
He was additionally vp of selling at GreatSchools, senior director product advertising at Zynga, vp of selling at Gazillion Leisure, and he additionally did stints at Kabam, BioWare, Vivendi, Webzen, Warner Bros., and Disney.
The New York Instances stated that YouTube had 7,173 folks earlier this week. Evidently there will probably be nobody in control of gaming at YouTube anymore. We confirmed Olebe’s layoff with a number of sources, and we’re ready for official remark from YouTube/Google.
I’ve embedded a video the place I interviewed Olebe and Google Play’s Moonlit Beshimov about their frustrations of a scarcity of variety within the recreation business and the urgency behind making the sport business extra emotionally clever.
The primary job is to acknowledge the issue and to have exhausting conversations about it, stated Olebe whereas talking on a panel at our GamesBeat Summit 2023 occasion. An enormous a part of the issue is that the sport business isn’t numerous sufficient, he stated. Primarily based on the worldwide acceptance of video games, gaming needs to be probably the most globally numerous business. But it surely’s not. Olebe’s concern was that as the sport business rose from subculture to mass tradition, a few of the dangerous artifacts of the subculture — like the shortage of variety — would rise with it.
Whereas layoffs are an enormous concern within the recreation business now, there are a variety of different jobs being impacted associated to video games on the platform corporations, as we will see with the elimination of Olebe’s publish.
Throughout Olebe’s tenure, YouTube re-signed main gaming creators like Ludwig, Braveness and Valkyrae. It additionally broke information with the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer’s launch — hitting 93 million views in a day. YouTube launched Playables. And it noticed big views for LoL Worlds and The Sport Awards. And it hit 100 billion views for Mario.
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