A fun place and exciting place to work, but limited career potential and long-term viability
Pros
It's a casual place to work without some of the formalities that other businesses have. Working in the video game business is fun, and casual games is a growing market. I learned a lot when the company was in hypergrowth mode and some of the strategies it was pursuing. Although the company is sizeable now, I learned a lot about startup culture, software development, and online based content delivery business when it was a smaller organization. There are a lot of smart and very talented people who work there who are very dedicated at what they do.
Cons
I think the HR department is severely lacking and hurts the rest of the company as a result. I don't think these people understand talent or have any idea on how to find new talent and maintain them. Part of it revolves around salary, and part of it revolves around not being able to execute well on their day to day tasks. They are providing opinions to management that are not insightful to the long term viability of the company. HR/Management likes to hire from the outside instead of within. Pay is also a lot less .than you can get elsewhere with the same skillset and experience. The company tries to use the fun factor to reel you in, without compensating you properly for your labor. Little do people know, that they can earn 30-35% more in the same position elsewhere. There is a lot of red tape at the business these days and it is very group think orientated which doesn't necessarily lead to good results. The bureaucracy also makes it difficult to get important decisions to be made effectively. Many key people in the management staff don't really play or understand video games or understand their place in the industry except for the founder. Although you can make large amounts of revenue with MBA's in office, their lack of understanding a quality product leads to compromised and diminishing quality of the titles they distribute as well a lack of vision for innovation in the long run. The CEO hasn't played a single video game for more than 5 minutes in his life