Dissappointed - Game Designer Wonder Works Studio Employee Review

- On my second day in the office the CEO made a statement saying "We like to hire people and not fire people, we will go through every possibly avenue to try and keep people here." This was before I would go on to witness layoffs and unfair firings that felt targeted towards individuals who would disagree with upper management. After a while upper management completely did away with performance improvement plans if they felt like individuals were underperforming. - I felt as thought the game design department was constantly gaslighted by upper management. Constantly we were promised training and opportunities of growth that never happened. Employees who were reassured regarding their performance by executives were fired with no prior warning or criticism leading up to their firings. - Upper management has a lack of understanding of the game development pipeline and roles of certain departments at the studio. Pivots were constantly being requested without an understanding of the affects it would have on production, budget, or the project timeline. Quite often there was an expectation that work could get done faster then it was being produced. - Some instances of crunch occurred despite denial from executives. (instances of people having to work over the weekends to meet project deadlines). What made things worse was that despite upper management claiming to be transparent they would openly deny making people work over the weekend or claim that the work was voluntary. Additionally, there are multiple instances of people working through lunches in an attempt to meet the different deadlines and expectations placed on them. - Clear and obvious favoritism for individuals. - General low moral in the studio. - Inconsistency with worker allocation. People would be pulled and assigned to new projects without being consulted by team members or producers. - Company has a strong disdain for hybrid or remote work.