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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 finished stints at Fb (Meta), the place he was senior world director for sport partnerships. He was laid off amongst 100 different workers 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 promoting at GreatSchools, senior director product advertising and marketing at Zynga, vp of promoting at Gazillion Leisure, and he additionally did stints at Kabam, BioWare, Vivendi, Webzen, Warner Bros., and Disney.
The New York Instances mentioned that YouTube had 7,173 individuals earlier this week. Evidently there will probably be nobody in command 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 range within the sport trade and the urgency behind making the sport trade extra emotionally clever.
The primary activity is to acknowledge the issue and to have arduous conversations about it, mentioned Olebe whereas talking on a panel at our GamesBeat Summit 2023 occasion. A giant a part of the issue is that the sport trade isn’t various sufficient, he mentioned. Primarily based on the worldwide acceptance of video games, gaming must be essentially the most globally various trade. However it’s not. Olebe’s concern was that as the sport trade rose from subculture to mass tradition, a number of the dangerous artifacts of the subculture — like the dearth of range — would rise with it.
Whereas layoffs are an enormous concern within the sport trade now, there are a number of different jobs being impacted associated to video games on the platform firms, as we are able to see with the elimination of Olebe’s submit.
Throughout Olebe’s tenure, YouTube re-signed main gaming creators like Ludwig, Braveness and Valkyrae. It additionally broke data with the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer’s launch — hitting 93 million views in a day. YouTube launched Playables. And it noticed large views for LoL Worlds and The Recreation Awards. And it hit 100 billion views for Mario.
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