BioWare Reviews
Updated Sep 24, 2020
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Pros
"Great people to work with, good focus on work life balance" (in 14 reviews)
"Positive helpful work environment" (in 13 reviews)
Cons
"Occasional crunch (Though much improved)" (in 10 reviews)
"The gaming industry, owned by EA" (in 8 reviews)
Pros & Cons are excerpts from user reviews. They are not authored by Glassdoor.
- Helpful (2)
"BioWare Lifer"
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEOI have been working at BioWare full-time for more than 10 years
Pros
BioWare has always had leadership that cares about its people. From the founders, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, to the current GM Aaryn Flynn. The company is focused on creating some of the best games in the world and it shows in its track record of games, including the recent Dragon Age: Inquisition (GOTY). BioWare's culture is defined by the statement "Quality in the Product and Quality in the Workplace". It is difficult to balance the needs of a project with the needs of the employees, but BioWare has done a good job of it over the years.
Cons
BioWare is a company that values open communication/critique. This can lead to stress as everyone's work is held to a high standard. If you enjoy a high performance culture, this might be a positive :-)
- Helpful (2)
"Lord of the Flies Management Style."
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookNo opinion of CEOI worked at BioWare full-time for more than 8 years
Pros
The pay and benefits were good.
Cons
Most disorganized art department I've ever worked for. Incredibly stressful and cut-throat work environment.
Continue reading - Helpful (2)
"Can be a good place"
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
RecommendsNegative OutlookI worked at BioWare full-time for more than 5 years
Pros
Good Pay, Good Benefits, Nice People
Cons
Doesn't get the recognition the studio deserves compared to the main (Edmonton) studio.
- Helpful (1)
"One of the over-all, best places I've worked."
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
RecommendsApproves of CEOI worked at BioWare full-time
Pros
The people, for the most part are collaborative, smart, creative. The studio is awesome. The benefits are great.
Cons
Transparency seems to be an issue. Meeting or private space (open floor plan) can sometimes be an issue.
- Helpful (7)
"Time to Think Twice?"
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookNo opinion of CEOI have been working at BioWare full-time for more than 8 years
Pros
* Passionate, smart developers who truly care about the products they're making. This sounds trite, but it's true. * EA really isn't as bad as many people think. * The studio is attempting to be really innovative with its current and next planned projects. This is a always a double-edged sword. Let's hope it works out for our fans' sake. * Salaries and benefits are decent. Some specializations could certainly make more money by moving outside the games industry, but overall you probably won't feel like you're being cheated.
Cons
* Front-line management is often unfairly expected to do the jobs of two people. They must simultaneously act as advanced individual contributors and as people managers. This leads to frequent burnout by the company's brightest. * Double standards. Upper management does not practice what they preach. Cronyism. This is clearly evident during promotion and bonus time. * Several teams have recently been centralized, and are now managed out of EA's HQ in Redwood Shores. This experiment has been a disaster. Remote management of employees can work, but EA is going about it completely wrong, and is causing serious damage to the studios they should instead be supporting. * Good news is shared. Bad news is hidden. It does not take a genius to figure out what the real state of things is at any given time. * Hand fulls of employees are frequently still in the office working at 3am. This is worn as a badge of honor, and absolutely should not be. * There is still too much Us vs. Them between BioWare's Edmonton and Austin studios. This has been going on for years. * To put it bluntly, open office plans suck. The official story is that it is done to foster collaboration. The obvious truth is that it is a cheaper setup, and allows companies to cram more employees into the available space. BioWare's open office plan is easily among the worst in which I've ever worked.
Continue reading - Helpful (5)
"Why Bioware is falling apart"
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookI worked at BioWare full-time
Pros
Was previously a great company but the culture changed.
Cons
This culture change wasn't for the better either. It reshaped the company and a lot of infighting happened because of this.
Continue reading - Helpful (11)
"A studio barely clinging to life"
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookNo opinion of CEOI have been working at BioWare full-time
Pros
- Opportunities to work on famous and popular AAA franchises - EA's pay and benefits are tops in the industry - Good facilities with lots of perks - Inclusive workplace that values and promotes diversity - There's a sincere effort to ensure work-life balance, but that's the first thing to disappear when a project catches fire
Cons
- Studio leadership is untrustworthy, unaccountable and obsessed with politics - Bad creative and business decisions are allowed to survive for years and destroy the projects that get stuck with them - Sub-studios are the public scapegoats for the Edmonton mothership's failures - Constant high turnover at all levels, with many replacement hires being temp workers who don't receive any benefits - After years of high-profile failures, fans and EA have lost faith in BioWare and left its future in doubt
Continue reading - Helpful (4)
"BioWare Austin could be great..."
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEOI have been working at BioWare full-time for more than 5 years
Pros
It's BioWare! We make amazing games that you and others will actually want to play. "One BioWare" collaboration between Edmonton, Austin, and Montreal is good stuff. HR is surprisingly awesome.
Cons
Beware the Marketing department. Yeesh, incompetence personified.
Continue reading - Helpful (1)
Pros
Great people to work with, good focus on work life balance. Very progressive in terms of people - very inclusive and goes out of their way to make sure that people feel taken care of. Felt like the top of the management tried to take care of all of the employees as a group.
Cons
Project-level leadership can act petty at times. Management shies from confrontation, which can result in employees feeling blindsided by things. When I was let go, I felt like I didn't really have a good metric of what it was that caused me to be let go - one manager was totally fine with me and gave me good reviews, while his replacement did not.
Continue reading - Helpful (1)
"Designer"
- Work/Life Balance★★★★★
- Culture & Values★★★★★
- Career Opportunities★★★★★
- Compensation and Benefits★★★★★
- Senior Management★★★★★
I have been working at BioWare full-time for more than 5 years
Pros
A lot of talented people, a relaxed work environment, frequent meals provided, excellent benefits and options for ESPP and 401k, very little crunch, great work/life balance.
Cons
difficult career progression, low salary
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