It became known that three YouTube executives were leaving the platform at once, including the head of the gaming department, Ryan Wyatt. Two other executives who are also leaving the company are Jamie Byrne and Heather Rivera, senior director of creator partnerships and global head of product partnerships, respectively. The latter, by the way, is also the Vice President of the platform. “Like many other companies, we have seen some of our employees take a new direction in the new year.
We are also fortunate to have a solid staff of talented leaders who can drive our business forward. We thank Heather, Jamie, and Ryan for their incredible contributions to YouTube over the years, and we can’t wait to see what they do next,” a YouTube official said. By the way, Ryan Wyatt, who also led YouTube’s virtual and augmented reality projects, joined the Google team already in 2014 after making a career in eSports and in the field of online broadcasts. He announced on Twitter that he will be leaving YouTube in the coming weeks to join Polygon Technology, a Web3 company, where he will lead the Polygon Studios division.
It is bittersweet news to share that I am leaving @youtube.
I have loved every minute of my time here, but it is time for my next endeavor.
I am elated to announce that I will be joining @0xPolygon ($MATIC) as their CEO of Polygon Studios.
Thank you for the memories! ❤️ pic.twitter.com/VhQxpqDbFO
— Ryan Wyatt (fwiz.eth) (@Fwiz) January 25, 2022
Ryan Wyatt also wrote that he “will focus primarily on growing the developer ecosystem through investment, marketing, and developer support.” He will oversee games, entertainment, fashion, news, sports, and several other areas in which Polygon Studios excels. During Ryan Wyatt’s tenure, YouTube has added a host of new features designed for content creators and viewers alike.
All the features implemented thanks to him were focused specifically on games. We are talking, for example, about subscriptions such as Super Chat and clips. In 2020, YouTube received the rights to broadcast Call of Duty League and Overwatch League events for three years. And yes, Ryan Wyatt also contributed to this. Over the past few years, the service has also poached several high-profile streamers from such a major streaming platform as Twitch, including Jack “CouRage” Dunlop, Rachel “Valkyrae” Hofstetter, Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar, and Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo. So this loss for YouTube is significant, and now the future of the platform in terms of video games is very vague.
