WORK ENVIRONMENT AND OFFICE VIBE:
The office space (in Bucharest) did not look like a game studio, but something between an accounting firm and a parking lot. Check out Ubisoft’s office in Paris, Montreal, Guildford etc. Our office building doesn’t even say “Ubisoft” on it, but “Mega Image” (a supermarket on the bottom floor of the building we were renting in).
There were very rare opportunities to relax and have a good time at work, and there was a general bad vibe sometimes.
The attitude towards the team was sometimes unfriendly and even hostile when the team’s desires and ideas did not align with the managers. There was an attitude of "Stop having fun and get back to work" in the past few months. There is a very toxic atmosphere in this workplace.
Employees sometimes have to deal with being micromanaged. From how they spend their time at work, to what is on their screen or where they can physically place their desk. It feels like you are working in a factory.
There was a general lack of trust from management, even though every sprint got delivered entirely + some bonuses that were not in the sprint.
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES, PERFORMANCE & HR INTERACTIONS:
Performance reviews felt very superficial. Sometimes “development areas” we’re copy-pasted from the previous performance review because the manager didn’t know what to write. Objectives were also something team members would write for themselves with no clear guidance or assistance from management. Peer-reviews were also very rarely used.
Learning opportunities were few and far between and you would quickly feel like you are stagnating. No real feeling of accomplishment.
Career advancement within the team was also very weak. Having no real clue about how it should be done, besides copy-pasting a list of non-measurable attributes sent by HR, planning for career advancement was left to the employee with little to no help from managers. Career advancement outside the team felt almost impossible. Although I saw it can be done, the process felt like you are being punished for trying. It is shady at best.
Any HR interaction is then relayed back to the department director. There is no way of escalating conflicts beyond this point and it makes you feel stuck.
Compensation, bonuses and salary increase as a result of good performance are a joke.
Also, this company underpays its employees. Even though it says it pays "according to the market", it does not.
AT LEAST THE PROJECTS ARE COOL, RIGHT?
No. Management suffers from a severe lack of vision and knowledge about a market where they should be in top 5. Game ideas, mechanics and other features were often forced upon the dev team by management because they saw it in a different game and "felt right".
Many features were copy-pasted from other games like Clash Royale and later Golf Clash. A lot of
arguments were settled with "that's how Clash Royale does it" - very unhealthy in a creative
environment. Copying other games' features doesn't mean we can expect to have the same
results, but this is how many features were created.
The game was bloated with features that users didn't want or need citing the same "Clash Royal
has it" method. This lead to user confusion, slow navigation and user drop early on.
Even though i saw more than half the team leave in less than a year, management felt disinterested in finding out why people are leaving and fixing the problem.
WHAT ABOUT THE TOOLS, YOU GET TO USE COOL STATE-OF THE ART ENGINES?
Again, no. We've never even seen Anvil of Snowdrop. The tools we used were very out of date (flash) and the internal tools were poorly made. Some of the hardware we used was more than 7 years old (think low cost graphics cards with 1gb memory) and there was high resistance from management when trying to ask for an upgrade ("Make do with what you have").
CONCLUSION:
Not a good place to work. There far better alternatives, even in Bucharest, if you want to work in gaming.
