Rockstar Games reviews

3.7

63% would recommend to a friend

(602 total reviews)

Sam Houser

74% approve of CEO

61% positive business outlook

Rockstar Games has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 602 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Rockstar Games employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Mídia e comunicação industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

602 reviews
1.0
Oct 19, 2018
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

You get to work on content that will be played by millions. It's nice to have Rockstar on your CV as it's a big known brand. Instead of getting bank holidays off, they give you the days to take off whenever throughout the year.

Cons

In light of the Rockstar being in the news recently for their 100-hour work weeks during crunch time, I would like to shed my experience on the matter. Long hours and unpaid overtime: I never did a 100-hour work week. But you HAVE to do some amount of overtime to survive. Upper management actively encourage working overtime in every weekly meeting, regardless of deadlines. All overtime at Rockstar North is UNPAID. They say overtime is voluntary, but the problem is, they give you so much work to do, that it is not possible to complete the work given in the normal 37.5hours per week. If you do not work overtime, you will fall behind on your work, and you will be replaced by one of the thousands who are dying to work here. The office is entirely designed to get employees to work for free as much as possible. It's open 24/7 (only shutting around Christmas time), they offer free (albeit unhealthy) canteen meals for those who stay after hours, they give access to unlimited soft drinks, beverages, and coffee, whose fridges are restocked daily, the lighting is just right, everything is designed to make you content with staying longer. Career Opportunities: As a Mission Scripter, career opportunities are nil. I met colleagues who have had the exact same job requirements for 5/6/7+ years. Doing the exact same thing, with a slightly increased pay. Sure, you may get lucky and become a team leader, but most don't, and even if you do, you won't be going any higher, as the positions have already been filled, and there are queues of existing employees ready to fill the spot when it appears. Transferable Skills: Currently Rockstar North use their own game engine, and Mission Scripters must use the in-house scripting language. This is only used at Rockstar, therefore if you want to move to any other games/software dev job, all the time learning and using this scripting language will be for nothing. I talk to colleagues who still work there, and they are depressed. They use their holidays sparingly, as a brief escape from the hard grind. Their daily routine involves working long hours, working on the weekends, work, work, and more work. I invite them to an event, and the response is always "Sorry man, got so much work to do ". If your dream is to dedicate the majority of your waking hours to making Rockstar games for the rest of your life, then this job may actually be for you. If not, then avoid like the plague.

1.0
Jun 6, 2014

Absolutely horrific.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Most games are popular and well known

Cons

Abusive managment Insane working hours Little creative say in your work Constant micromanaging from above Very secretive management Just incredibly badly organized, its hard to express how badly run this company is. Pouring resources and countless (unpaid) OT hours into ill thought out and bloated feature lists.

1.0
Apr 26, 2018
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Get to work on famous games. Get to work with many skilled people from many departments.

Cons

Your entire career rests in the hands of one person, who isn't interested in how you do your work or understands it. we've literally never kept to a deadline, management has never tried to understand why.most managers have been recruited from QA through nepotism, they have no experience managing people, or developing games and they are given the responsibility of leading design departments, designing software can be quite complex, being managed by people who are good at QA is a joke.Criticism is frowned upon and disregarded, even from a software engineering perspective, no meetings, no software development life cycle. You will be expected to do overtime, you will not get paid for overtime, you will receive a bonus at the end of the year, which is at the discretion of the unskilled unqualified disinterested director of design. Managers are unqualified, unskilled and there is no accountability

Viewing 7 - 9 of 602 Reviews

Glassdoor has 738 Rockstar Games reviews submitted anonymously by Rockstar Games employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Rockstar Games is right for you.