YouTube gaming head who swiped Twitch stars like DrLupo is leaving for a crypto company
YouTube's head of gaming, Ryan Wyatt, announced today that he's leaving YouTube and Google for blockchain company Polygon Studios. February will be Wyatt's last month at YouTube.
«I will miss YouTube dearly, but it is time for me to pursue other endeavors in life and where my passions are taking me,» Wyatt wrote in a farewell statement posted to Twitter. «I am fascinated by blockchain app development and am beyond thrilled to enter the web3 space.»
Wyatt was at YouTube for over seven years, and oversaw its push into game streaming and the high-profile poaching of Twitch streamers such as Valkyrae, DrLupo, and TimTheTatman. In a Washington Post article published last year (which I saw today after its author pointed to it on Twitter), Wyatt, who was an esports commentator himself, emphasized the importance of work-life balance for contracted streamers.
«I think stream grind is a real thing,» Wyatt said at the time. «I think stream burnout is a real thing. I am not trying to bring people over here to stream 150 to 200 hours a month. I don't think that's healthy. It's not what we're trying to create at YouTube.»
The company Wyatt is joining is called Polygon, but is not related to the gaming website of the same name—a confusing choice, especially since its purple logo is somewhat similar. Polygon calls itself «Ethereum's Internet of Blockchains,» and makes an open source protocol and framework meant to help developers build, secure, and scale Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. The gist for lay observers, according to Polygon, is that the Ethereum blockchain is a popular but problematic way to transact cryptocurrency and NFTs, and Polygon makes it easier for blockchain developers to interface with it securely.
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