Heard good things about Bungie and Epic Games -- are these stories true? Where else is good and why?
Blizzard, hands down, only good option
Not anymore, sadly. It's no longer old school Blizzard but rather money-grubbing Activision. Steer clear.
What a fucking joke. Blizzard sucks. Haven't shipped anything good in years, company is falling apart, all their good people are leaving. Heck, even their ceo left. Share price of atvi is in shambles. What's good about it? A crumbled legacy that it once built but left to die? Give it 5 more years, company will go under when their arrogance over takes them while they continue to fuck up. They're notoriously difficult to work with, super protective of their ip. Which is weird cause none of their ips are actually relevant anymore. What a fucking joke of a company
Microsoft Games Studio. We pay you better.
None. They pay very little.
Why do gaming pay so less? They have high margins
Sometimes they have high margins, and when they do, those margins are for a short time
Gaming is generally alternating coast/burn cycles. Drop a new game/new feature? Big money for a month or so. You can't drop one every month though, so that money needs to tide you over for 3months or more.
Riot Games is great, though I may be biased :P
Bungie is nothing like the studio that released Halo 1-Reach. Haven't heard great things Blizzard also losing key talent - new projects are a joke. Ares team was onto something great but they killed it. Ubi is fine, seems to be getting better. Naughty Dog & Guerilla I still hear consistently good things about. There's a ton of options - but if you want AAA be prepared for 70 hour weeks at minimum.
Ubisoft is great! You just won’t get paid, but that’s gaming
Come to Valve, we do really cool stuff across a bunch of live products. Just look at DOTA2 and CSGO over the past 12 months, plus Underlords and a bunch of new games in the works. Lots of creative freedom and experimentation. Worst part of working here is “where’s HL3?” being commented on all your Blind posts.
Valve is some magical company that is hard to get into though. You guys hardly hire, which is why revenue to employee ratio is super high. Nice to keep it that way though as once you onboard more than 400 employees, it's hard to maintain that vibe
More hiring lately than in the past as we’ve (IMO) felt the pressure to ship more now than previously, so more people are putting time into reviewing resumes etc. We have a high bar but no quotas, so you don’t have to worry about “timing it right”.
Roblox?