Employees Bashing Major Video Game Companies

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If you have the time, you really need to read this article. Apparently there are a lot of pissed off employees in the gaming industry. :eek:

Crytek:

"A mediocre stepping stone studio for most developers," written by a former employee of Crytek's flagship Frankfurt studio four days ago.

  • Executive management has consistently shown their lack of business acumen by not having a clear strategy for the company for years. This resulted multiple times in changes in direction, rework, overtime and missed objectives
  • Hardcore crunching at Crytek is common currency. It's not just "some overtime" to meet important milestones, it's a terrifying mandated lifestyle and a culture of quantity, not quality. Understandably, this results in a cyclical exodus of inordinate amounts of talent
  • Salaries, benefits and perks are significantly below par for a AAA studio in the games industry
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Welcome to the 21st century where employees are expected to work 50+ hours now...
 
Wait, your telling me that an employee somewhere thinks that management are all idiots? I can't believe it! :D
 
This is nothing new for the games developers, they set a date for a title to be made, the publisher gives them an even more unreasonable gold standard product delivery date. And to rub salt in the wound, the particular branch might be shut down or "merged into the publishers office" as they call it a few months after project completion, which is happening all too frequently in the last few years.
 
Sadly this stuff is true of lot of companies. Then there's layoffs and the CEO gets a bonus. :D
 
Valve
Company Overview
Average Rating: 5.0 ("Very Satisfied")

"possibly the best game company to work for," written by a current Valve employee. August 18, 2008.

Pros – good quality of life, and being surrounded by creative people. there are many reasons to work at valve. the standards are pretty high, but they push you and really make you strive for the newest, best thing. there is no formal management structure, and responsibility is given on a competence level or if one asks for it. there is lots of room to try new things, so you feel like you are learning all the time. i have been at valve for many years and found it to be extremely rewarding, both in a business sense and personal one.

Cons – very competitive internally (high standards).

Advice to Senior Management – more insight into what's happening at the company, future plans.

[Editor's note: This was the most negative Valve review Superannuation was able to find.]
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"Bubububut Valve fanboys are just just mindless and only love hats!"
 
It's my understanding that anyone who codes for a living will always have to deal with all of these conditions everywhere they go. At least it seems that way...
 
My experience is about 50 hour weeks while always being "on call" for an emergency, though ive only had 3 or so emergencies.
 
AthlonXP said:
Welcome to the 21st century where employees are expected to work 50+ hours now...
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In France, they only work 4-day work weeks, and there is a month (August) where everyone pretty much has the entire month off for holiday (vacation).. national holiday thing.
 
Don't like your job, get another one or suck it up, simple really.
 
I work in a software department of a company that mostly sells hardware. I'm a technician (not software dev) in a test group, assisting the testers and keeping the equipment running. From what I've seen with the testers and the developers, 50 hours/week is pretty standard. I'm glad I'm not one. I'm paid hourly, so I do my 40 and go home. Their work suffers for it, too. Work quality is pretty poor, compared to the same people doing 45 hours/week just a year and a half ago. Everybody is burning out, and it shows.

I used to do the 50+/week, but I got tired of it real quick. I'm not going to burn myself out for a company anymore. It's just not worth it. I make good enough money, and I get more work done in 40 hours than most do in 50, and I generally do it right the first time. So, I'm still in pretty good standing even though I only do 40 hours. Then again, I only work for managers who understand the concept of quality over quantity. They probably get more value out of my 40 hours than an overworked person's 50 hours. That's where most managers, especially upper level managers, fail: understanding that overworking your people and demanding more hours out of them generally gives poor results.
 
All it takes is one asshole with a can of gas - wearing a bacon tuxedo and a chin dildo to ruin the party. I'd be happy to be a game dev, honestly.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Sadly this stuff is true of lot of companies. Then there's layoffs and the CEO gets a bonus. :D
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but I thought it was the rich who created jobs? :eek:

you mean the rich are the ones firing people to make their quarterly financials look good for investors? Then they fire employees to reduce costs so they can have a better profit/revenue stream?

Do you really mean those Republicans are lying and the rich are actually responsible for firings? How come they don't use that in their sales pitch?

"The wealthy create jobs and they're also responsible for the layoffs"

oh that's right... it doesn't sound good.
 
aronesz said:
In France, they only work 4-day work weeks, and there is a month (August) where everyone pretty much has the entire month off for holiday (vacation).. national holiday thing.
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This is incorrect. What you are describing pertains to students and teachers up to highschoool.
 
It wouldn't surprise me. I'm sure Cvat Yerli has a lot of technical expertise, but he an immature, foolish manager.
 
_PixelNinja said:
This is incorrect. What you are describing pertains to students and teachers up to highschoool.
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Yes this is wildly incorrect, and even most of these students work on Wednesday morning.

France has a 35 hours workweek for most (there are exceptions), 5 weeks of paid vacation (to be taken at any time) and only some days where no one usually work.

J Macker said:
but I thought it was the rich who created jobs? :eek:

you mean the rich are the ones firing people to make their quarterly financials look good for investors? Then they fire employees to reduce costs so they can have a better profit/revenue stream?
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"The rich" isn't some kind of group of people who do everything alike.
 
pankkake said:
France has a 35 hours workweek for most (there are exceptions), 5 weeks of paid vacation (to be taken at any time) and only some days where no one usually work.
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I would say there are more than exceptions; the 35 hour workweek is merely a baseline – as soon as you look at positions with responsibilities or people employed by private companies, the 35 hours are easily exceeded.
 
One thing I've learned from watching Extra Credits is that it sucks to work in the game industry. The companies are so money hungry they abuse their employee's. As gamers we complain about games, but a lot of developers would love to spend the time to put more content into games. The companies they work for however, do not. It's a constant viscous cycle of getting stuff done in time vs sleep and pay. They make it very clear that you're expandable, and there's lots of people waiting in line to take your job.

I really wanted to work in the game industry at one point of my life, but I think I'm happier just fixing computers. You can tell the quality of work based on the treatment of employee's. You can tell from a company like Valve vs a company like Activision. Activision would be lucky to see me buy a game from them, vs Valve who I almost always buy everyone one of their games. The way they treat their employee's is proportional to their quality of games.
 
Lack of overtime pay is why I left the I.T. industry twenty years ago and never looked back. It's amazing how a company (gaming, programming, etc...) thinks they have the right to have employees work up to sixty hours per week without any extra compensation beyond their base salary.
 
freeloader1969 said:
Lack of overtime pay is why I left the I.T. industry twenty years ago and never looked back. It's amazing how a company (gaming, programming, etc...) thinks they have the right to have employees work up to sixty hours per week without any extra compensation beyond their base salary.
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Can't tell if serious or trolling.
Salary is just that. You get paid to get the job done no matter the cost. If you cannot or will not do that then don't take up a job that approximately 12,389,771 people in this country would love to have.

Most folks in IT are on salary. I am an have been for some 15 years now. I work normal 40 hour weeks with very occasional spikes to 60 hours. In return I receive a great salary, excellent benefits, and a work environment I love so much that I turned down offers of 1.5x my salary elsewhere.

Although you did the right thing, you didn't like the working conditions so you left, most people just stay, are miserable, and make everyone else around them miserable.

However, employment is very much a contract in which consideration was provided. You are offered a certain amount of money (salary) in exchange for your commitment to the company. If one no longer likes the compensation one is always free to leave and find another job.

Would I work for a company that works me 60 hours a week? Hell no. But I can choose my place of employment whereas many people cannot. That's capitalism for you, working as intended.
 
Meh.

Pretty much what I would expect. Most large companies (see major game studios) treat their developers like cattle...flip side of that is most developers I've worked with aren't anything special even though most of them think they are. The best companies to work for in general are smaller, successful companies - they get 90% of the good talent because they're picky (by definition they have to be) and everybody else works for the big companies. If you have one of those small, successful company jobs, rest assured, you're probably at the top of the talent pool and you have a bright future. Otherwise, you may very well be expendable and the big companies will treat you like that - long hours w/ mediocre pay and boring assembly line type work. There are some exceptions, but not all that many.
 
Summary after easing the article.

Crap
Crap
crap
....
Crap
Valve == awesome sauce
Crap
Crap
Crap
....
 
What I took away from that mostly is that developers think they are worth more than they are. It's like that in a lot of industries, guy goes to college with promises of bug money, graduates to realize he's not worth that much to a company and turns sour about it.
 
Crap, stupid phone. lol!

What I was saying is basically the loudest complaints trend to be the laziest and most worthless workers as well.
 
Thuleman said:
Can't tell if serious or trolling.
Salary is just that. You get paid to get the job done no matter the cost. If you cannot or will not do that then don't take up a job that approximately 12,389,771 people in this country would love to have.

Most folks in IT are on salary. I am an have been for some 15 years now. I work normal 40 hour weeks with very occasional spikes to 60 hours. In return I receive a great salary, excellent benefits, and a work environment I love so much that I turned down offers of 1.5x my salary elsewhere.

Although you did the right thing, you didn't like the working conditions so you left, most people just stay, are miserable, and make everyone else around them miserable.

However, employment is very much a contract in which consideration was provided. You are offered a certain amount of money (salary) in exchange for your commitment to the company. If one no longer likes the compensation one is always free to leave and find another job.

Would I work for a company that works me 60 hours a week? Hell no. But I can choose my place of employment whereas many people cannot. That's capitalism for you, working as intended.
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Not trolling. Our company was in the midst of down-sizing and while laying off programmers they were increasing the workload exponentially on the programmers who remained. I just got sick of the whole situation especially when you're watching the C.T.O and Manager of Operations starting at nine to nine thirty in the morning and then leaving at four thirty. There was times that I would start at seven in the morning and not leave my office until seven or eight at night and I still couldn't accomplish all my program requests.

I've been in the trades since I left the I.T. industry in 1990. I've worked in both union and non-union shops and have been treated way better as far as wages, overtime and benefits than I ever was in the I.T. industry. I'm glad you enjoy your job though; most I.T. guys are miserable. You're one of the lucky ones in the I.T. industry. :)
 
colinstu said:
No thanks. Just don't pay money for shitty games, good as that.
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that has never hurt CEOs, only employees. "Oh look, these silly people aren't paying as much for our games this time. I guess it's time to lay 1000 people off so it doesn't touch our seven/eight figure salary!"
 
Blkout said:
LOL, unions are the death every industry. They wouldn't have a job when the union was done doing their dirty work.
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You go to work on weekends too, right? 7 days a week? And during holidays?

Yeah, that's thanks to unions.
 
There's a lot of pathetic whining going on.

Bottom line, you get what you deserve. If you don't like the culture somewhere, do something about it. Demand better or leave, if you can. Either you have the talent and tenacity to do better, or you don't.

The trick is to stop thinking of yourself as a wage slave who is subject to an employer and merely does what you're told...think of yourself as someone who independently sells your labor on the open market. If your labor is top notch you can demand top notch conditions.
 
Blkout said:
LOL, unions are the death every industry. They wouldn't have a job when the union was done doing their dirty work.
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:rolleyes:

Yeah, we can't have people exercising freedom of speech and assembly, now can we? How dare anyone have the temerity to negotiate with their masters.
 
AthlonXP said:
Welcome to the 21st century where employees are expected to work 50+ hours now...
Click to expand...

My bosses demand that I not work more than 40 hours. I'm basically told to GTFO at 5pm, with a smile.

It's an engineering company with enough history and experience to know what works in the long run. Of course the trick is, if you suck at your job, you don't get to work there.
 
I do 9 to 6 a day, usually take a hour lunch break and often go to the restroom for 1 hour a day (phone).

Im loved and rewarded well (I do work hard when I do).

Loving IT right now.
 
H-street said:
Summary after easing the article.

Crap
Crap
crap
....
Crap
Valve == awesome sauce
Crap
Crap
Crap
....
Click to expand...

There were a few where the developer was good to work for but the publisher (EA) made life difficult.
 
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