Yahoo 游戏负责人因重组与裁员离任

Yahoo is restructuring its games division, resulting in staff cuts and the departure of the company’s head of games Andrew Pedersen.

As of today, October 28, Yahoo’s Games team is in the process of being integrated with the company’s platforms team, which builds across many of Yahoo’s products and verticals. GamesBeat learned of the shift from a source at the company who communicated with GamesBeat on background, noting that the move was intended to bring games closer to the rest of the company and more smoothly integrate games into Yahoo’s everyday user experience. 

As part of the shift, Andrew Pedersen is stepping down from his role as Yahoo’s head of games. Pedersen took on the leadership role at Yahoo’s games division in January 2025 following a stint as an executive at Electronic Arts. During his tenure as Yahoo’s head of games, Pedersen helped streamline the company’s game offerings, removing some dormant legacy titles from the platform and working with third-party developers like Candy Crush developer King to launch unique titles on Yahoo. The original version of Yahoo Games existed on Yahoo’s website between 1998 and 2016, with Yahoo relaunching the current version of Yahoo Games in September 2023.

In the first six months of 2026, the number of daily active users engaging with Yahoo Games increased by 60 percent, with gameplay clicks on the platform going up by 25 percent during the same period. At the moment, the Yahoo Games website prominently features titles like Blackjack Blitz, Solitaire Roadtrip, and IQ Trivia, as well as Crushable, the original title published in partnership with King.

“Andrew Pedersen has played a pivotal role in putting Yahoo Games back on the map, from leading its relaunch earlier this year to driving the platform’s growth since,” said a Yahoo spokesperson in a statement emailed to GamesBeat. “We’re grateful for his contributions and wish him the best. We remain committed to Yahoo Games and will continue to invest in the vertical, building on the growth the platform has seen this year.”

With its burgeoning gaming vertical, Yahoo is one of several companies investing resources into the daily casual gaming trend, making the bet that some of Yahoo’s 250 million monthly active users will be convinced to engage with the platform more frequently through addicting and snackable daily gameplay. It’s also not the only company in the space that made a structural change to bring gaming closer to the rest of the company in recent months — although the New York Times took a different approach when it promoted the company’s former head of games, Jonathan Knight, to the Times’ newly-created role of Chief Games Officer last month.

As Yahoo integrates its Games team into the company’s platforms team, it plans to continue to host and support its original games, according to the background source at Yahoo. Yahoo will still maintain a distinct Games team under the umbrella of the company’s platforms division. In addition to Pedersen’s exit, Yahoo has laid off other members of its Games team as a result of the restructuring, although the background source did not share more details. This represents Yahoo’s latest round of layoffs following a cut in May 2026 that impacted several members of the website’s Sports team.

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