Fans of The Try Guys are not starting the day with good news. Following Ned’s cheating scandal and inevitable departure from their highly successful YouTube channel in 2022, The Try Guys find themselves once again making headlines — this time, because of Eugene.
Just a few hours ago, fans received the news that Eugene Lee Yang, one of the original four members of The Try Guys — which started as a Buzzfeed segment on YouTube — would be leaving the channel. Despite being one of the founders of their company 2nd Try, Lee Yang had long been absent from new videos due to his packed schedule following his Hollywood breakthrough with Pixar’s Nimona.
Unsurprisingly, it was only a matter of time before the news of his departure broke. While many of us (myself included) hoped for Eugene’s continuous return to the channel, in the end, the rising actor is busier than ever before. With only two original members left, we’re all wondering about the future of The Try Guys.
Are The Try Guys ending?
The Try Guys are not disbanding, even after Fulmer and Lee Yang’s departures from the channel. In fact, the company is currently being led by the two remaining members, Keith Habersberger and Zach Kornfeld, who have been the main producers and writers of the videos for a few years now. The channel will continue to be led by Zach and Keith, but some things will be changing.
For starters, following former BuzzFeed alumni The Watcher’s attempt to create a subscription-only platform (which they eventually abandoned after ire from their audience), Habersberger and Kornfeld have announced to Rolling Stone that they will also start a subscription-based model for The Try Guys. They hope to establish a new standard for content creation that moves away from YouTube’s ever-changing algorithm.
“We’ve been doing this for 10 years, we have seen both the joys and the limits of algorithmic media making. We’ve obviously benefited from it greatly ourselves. But we’re at a point where we find that our taste and our audience’s taste is at odds with what algorithms, specifically, the YouTube algorithm rewards.”
The subscription-based platform will be called 2ndTry TV, and while it will work similarly to Patreon, Habersberger and Kornfeld have assured fans that their old content will not be placed behind a paywall. This platform will simply serve as a way for fans to support many of the channel’s segments, such as their highly popular “Without a Recipe.”
In addition to this new platform, The Try Guys will also be welcoming some new yet familiar faces on the channel. In a new video, the duo announced that Ash Perez, formerly known for their work on BuzzFeed, will be joining the channel occasionally. Faces like Kwesi James and Jonny Manganello’s will also continue to be part of the channel as what we like to call them the “unofficial Try Guys.”
