Glassdoor Reviews

Glassdoor reviews provide us with valuable information about the backstages and day by day realities of game studios. The purpose of this thread is to present and discuss the content of glassdoor reviews. Let's start with some recent negative reviews on Obsidian.

Apr 8, 2018
Helpful (2)


"Your team will keep you going when it gets rough... but doesn't make up for the deep-rooted problems"
StarStarStarStarStar
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee


Doesn't Recommend

Negative Outlook

No opinion of CEO

I worked at Obsidian Entertainment full-time (More than 3 years)


Pros

Really friendly and caring people
Monthly birthday treats
Parties and holiday activities are fun when they happen


Cons

Company has been around 15 years, run by people who've been around 10 more. You'd think they'd know how to run a business by now, but you'd be wrong. Leadership is completely entrenched in old ideas and micromanagement. Despite several close calls in the past, the company has not structured deals in a timely & effective manner to prevent massive layoffs. Any sense of "open" structure is an utter farce - leadership has no time for you on a personal level (despite the facade of an 'open-door policy) meanwhile getting involved on a microscopic level on projects and not allowing the talent they have to shine. Pay is below average, no bonuses. Zero career progression/promotions, spare in-the-trench or if you're a friend or family of an owner. Massive nepotism. HR is utterly incompetent. Owners have explicitly said they don't read reviews and decide raises based on their opinion of you. Due to micromanagement, leadership causes massive delays in projects due to midnight hour decisions or pivoting. Company strategy is to do the same thing for the next 5+ years with little innovation. Executive producer holds all the power.

Advice to Management

-Get out of the way of your top talent, and hire top talent to fill in where leadership is lacking
-Establish adequate training and career progression
-Lose the nepotism
-Explore new ideas


"Confused Company, Let Employees Do Their Jobs or They'll Leave"
StarStarStarStarStar
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee

Doesn't Recommend
Neutral Outlook
Disapproves of CEO

I worked at Obsidian Entertainment full-time

Pros

- Great devs, you’ll love your core team minus a director or two and most of the company owners
- Despite cons below, devs and hanging out with fellow employees outside of work is great
- you get to work on RPGs (except Pathfinder and a few other games in past not being RPGs)

Cons

- Compliments on performance or any feedback at all is rare
- All gender issues in reviews below, lot of women have resigned, although lack of promotion and training happens to everyone
- Pay is below average, raises are minor, money seems to be in a trashfire somewhere (DICE parties, sponsored or attended). What seemed to generate revenue for the company doesn’t last long, keeping the treadmill going
- Sense owners have checked out. CEO and owners absent a lot (especially this year and last – they’re more concerned about their new houses or renovating their houses than work), two in particular fight a lot, cold war-style (CEO and Exec. Producer) and waste time for months
- Morale can get low
- “Popular” review at top of queue is a paid featured review for Obsidian being an Enhanced Profile (it’s why the date is out of sync) - it’s also least helpful and super generic
- Sense that if not an owner idea, it’s not going to go anywhere (different if kept within team)
- Few job expectations except design, job training is negative reinforcement (less “do this, here’s what I want” it's more “you were wrong to do this” or “don’t do this”, kills morale)
- Owners and several directors not held accountable for own tasks and responsibilities, esp. when causes problems for rest of team with delays or by them trying to do too much and add too many features
- Owners literally demand respect, do nothing to deserve it
- Owners and directors worse when involved with a project, can waste weeks of time based on decisions or eventually “fade away” leaving team holding the stick
- Your department will get assigned devs without warning, they will be the type you don’t need (usually producers or desginers/artists no one team wants to work with), and you don’t get the people you DO need and have been asking for
- The transfer of employees like this is often a further issue b/c their work performance has never been brought up with them, so it falls on the new team to do what the old team and the owners failed to do (not always, you get good ones, too)
- Sometimes these employees are protected by owner friendships, adds further difficulty
- Multiple tasking systems that never stick and are never adhered to, change often and tasking systems seem random
- Owners ask teams to set up pages to get feedback, then don’t provide any feedback (except CEO, but comments are unhelpful)
- Tasking systems further undermined by owners promoting them, then flipping the table and throwing it out the tasking window with sudden requests and no time assigned to do them – WHY TASK THEN
- Tasking and programs that DO work (Slack) are strangely resisted
- Lot of owner friendships and lot of subsequent employee friend retention as a result when higher-performers are let go – worse, NEW bad friend employees are hired, esp. in production, adding to the mess and inner circle
- Get IPs but upper level doesn’t support them or believe in them (Pathfinder Adventures) – some team members don’t either
- Poor contracts, but worse, exploit good ones with publishers, damaging relations with "cost padding" with no reason – team gets blamed
- Refuse to pay contractors for work in order to create leverage with publisher to pay a milestone, team has to deal with it
- Projects can get canceled suddenly with no back-up plans
- Mistakes are not learned from, and common procedures for situations not established, even when easy to set up
- Reviews either don’t happen, are late, and provide no direction for growth – worse (also said in other reviews below), reviews have a lot of individual bias – a lead’s opinion of your performance is worth less than an owner’s distant opinion of you, but you’ll never find out until too late b/c you don’t even get a review or feedback
- Job you’re hired for may not be your job title, resulting in sudden surprise demotion when you ask why your title is different than it is
- No management training, esp. production
- Producers at Obsidian often end up switching to other roles in order to enjoy games again

Advice to Management

- You set an example in all respects, take a good look at how you manage and how you treat people
- Owners and directors - If your teams get more done at better quality and make publishers happy when you’re NOT involved, question how you lead and how you’re really contributing when you are involved
- Grow up. The “we’re still the same scared kids we used to be, finding our way” doesn’t hold water 20+ years later, so be an adult, not a baby
- If you want employees to deliver things on time, don’t insult them by being late with everything YOU do (reviews, feedback on critical pipelines, etc.)
- Train and manage employees, esp. production
- Task production and task yourselves – and make it transparent. Production is one of the least tasked departments at the company, and owners set the example
- Don’t bring in vacant drones or promote unproven business drones to fill needed positions in business management and marketing, trust in people already in those positions or take time to hire the right people to promote the company


"Stuck in their ways"
StarStarStarStarStar
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Irvine, CA

Doesn't Recommend
Neutral Outlook
Disapproves of CEO

I worked at Obsidian Entertainment full-time (More than 3 years)

Pros

- Some really talented, awesome people work there


Cons

- Structural decision-making problems. They've been making the same types of games for 20 years, and still don't know how to run a project without crunch time.
- Leads are not well-supported, nor are they trained in how to manage people.
- No senior women, and women are not promoted to senior positions. For a company that touts itself as caring about diversity, and that makes games with female characters in important roles, this is both ironic and as serious lack.
- Lack of feedback and reviews, moving goal-posts for advancement.
- Lack of clear art direction, depending on the project. Artistic quality is not valued by studio as a whole, so it depends on whether or not the lead of a particular project is any good.
- Highly political work environment. The quality of the work you do is irrelevant to your leads and only appreciated by your peers.


Advice to Management

Create a clear pipeline for advancement. Restructure reviews to leave less room for individual bias.


"Good Place, but don't Rock the Boat"
StarStarStarStarStar
Current Employee - Anonymous Employee

Recommends
Neutral Outlook
Approves of CEO

I have been working at Obsidian Entertainment full-time (More than 5 years)

Pros

The owners are transparent about projects and accessible to everyone.

Crunch is acknowledged as a sometimes necessary evil, but management genuinely tries to avoid it when possible.

The owners and HR are also pretty flexible in working with employees. There's an understanding that life happens and they'll try to work with you for missed days and makeup time.

There's a solid studio culture and love for RPG's. People play D&D at lunch and stay late for game tournaments. There's a beer club and cheese club and all sorts of shenanigans that are encouraged throughout the year.

The core group at Obsidian has worked together for decades. There's a feeling of camaraderie and family that's distinct from other places I've been.

Cons

The flip side of people working together for so long is an entrenchment of doing things a certain way. There's resistance to updating game mechanics or even matching current industry trends. "Who else has done it this way?" is often asked by management before dismissing any "new" ideas (meaning not from CRPG's in the 90's).

There's also a select group of employees who, for one reason or another, are always the ones who get extra perks, promotions, or protection from layoffs . This doesn't seem related to talent, but moreso personal relationships with the owners.

Employee promotion is almost nonexistent. The leads and directors are entrenched, even with other employees who could do a better job. If it were a bigger company this wouldn't be that big of a deal. At its current size this stifles the studio's overall growth.

All of this contributes to a feeling of, "don't rock the boat." When you're hired, you'll probably stay at the position for the rest of your time at Obsidian. Owners will dangle promotion promises for years until people either threaten to quit or just straight up leave. The company has lost A LOT of good employees this way.

Pay is a bit below industry standard. No bonuses.


Advice to Management

Cycle through the project leads and management. Give employees some sense of career path advancement and/or mentorship. A lot of hungry and driven employees have left because they didn't see a future (and rightly so).

Genuinely be fair to everyone. Employees notice the special treatment a few people consistently get.



"Needs structural change"
StarStarStarStarStar
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee


I worked at Obsidian Entertainment full-time

Pros

- Some interesting IPs.
- Cool people with a good sense of community because the company is pretty small.
- Fun work events.
- few weekends and after hour crunch periods.

Cons

- They get bullied by publishers often. which often means making bad deals leading to later problems.
- career progression is muddled. It's not clear what you need to do to advance and it can be hard unless you know or have someone vouching for you. Good work gets overlooked and rarely praised.
- The pipelines need work, between collaborating with publishers and making sure employees are tasked correctly and with reasonable workloads.
- Leads need to be responsible for their people, not just given more work and treated as the touchpoints for informing their team of changes or the middleman to talk to producers.
- Working in a vacuum, not a lot of peer review, iteration, feedback or collaboration.
- Not a good environment for women. Sexism and missing stairs among some male employees. Also, there are few to no women in lead/management/senior positions.

Advice to Management

- Create clearer hierarchy.
- Don't hire seniors, make them, and promote people who do good work.
- Stop leaning on past successes and push towards doing something new.


"it is an ok job"
StarStarStarStarStar
Former Employee - Level Designer in Irvine, CA

Doesn't Recommend
Neutral Outlook
No opinion of CEO
I worked at Obsidian Entertainment full-time (More than a year)

Pros

Their were a lot of good people here.
Decent work life balance
Has good places to eat across the street,

Cons

Pay is less then other companies
Poor developer to publisher relations
Prone to yearly layoffs
No bonuses
Very little room for advancement
Entrenched management so no upward mobility

Advice to Management

RPG's are what you are good at. Make them. Don't branch out into genres you know nothing about.
Avoid rampant growth. The company is a bubble that keeps bursting over and over again.



"All heart, no teeth"
StarStarStarStarStar
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee

Doesn't Recommend
Neutral Outlook
No opinion of CEO

I worked at Obsidian Entertainment full-time (More than 3 years)

Pros

High Creative energy.
Interesting projects and pitches
Studio attempts to make development team happy

Cons

No strong gameplay emphasis
Poor production scheduling.
Overly Top heavy management.
Layoffs are frequent as well as mismanagement of talent.

 

Negative InXile review

"Fundamentally Broken Management"
StarStarStarStarStar
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Newport Beach, CA

Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
Disapproves of CEO
I worked at InXile Entertainment full-time

Pros

Full of Passionate Developers.
There used to be more positives but the studio environment and the communication standards sharply dropped once the studio split between Newport and New Orleans

Cons

Communication and management style.
Despite being a tiny studio High-level managers are too isolated from general production staff, often going weeks without meaningful interactions with the people and projects they are supposed to manage.

Management treats software development like manufacturing. Constantly valuing hours worked over quality of output. And will pursue feature because they fit in the schedule without any consideration if they will be worth the time or effort.

General communication between offices and remote contractors is badly organized and inefficient.

This creates a messy and alienating production process that has led to a steady exodus of people across multiple disciplines.

Advice to Management

Get better communication tools,
Try working in the same room as the rest of your team,
Focus on being a productive team member

Understand that there are people who worked for the studio from 5+ years ago that recognized these same issues and still speak negatively of their experience.

 

hmmmmmmmm... I'm pretty sure Sawyer didn't start out as "Design Director" for the studio 15 years ago.

wtf i fucking love obsidian now.

 

is Tina Parker still the head of HR in Obsidian

 

A lot of butthurt geniuses here,shameless Obsidian couldn't see trough their pure genius and they had to leave... Also not enough women,it should be 70/30 women! Won't be surprised if those anonymous are twatter users that wouldn't recognise mouse from keyboard.

 

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Their public face in updates was a woman, their narrative lead is a woman, their HR is a woman, etc. It seems like another paranoid feminist who complains about everything.

 

- Sense owners have checked out. (*cough* Avellone *cough*)

- CEO and owners absent a lot (especially this year and last – they’re more concerned about their new houses or renovating their houses than work)

So Feargus and Tim Cain were not working most of the time? That's an absurd.

- two in particular fight a lot, cold war-style (CEO and Exec. Producer) and waste time for months

The executive producer is Adam Brennecke, who is the other guy.

 

-Get out of the way of your top talent,

That's why Avellone left!

There's also a select group of employees who, for one reason or another, are always the ones who get extra perks, promotions, or protection from layoffs . This doesn't seem related to talent, but moreso personal relationships with the owners.

I want to know who is there because of nepotism.

 

which one of these was written by MCA?

 

Exactly! The first one, of course!

 

Obsidian certainly have some management problems,but those reviews are just whiny people or just fake.

 

None in my opinion. MCA strikes me as a guy with balls that will just tell it straight and not be anonymous.

 

All reviews are anonymous in glassdoor. He openly criticised Obsidian nepotism in some occasions.

 

I mean, if you work for someone else, it's obvious that you're not the one that will make decisions.
I don't get those people, if they want to have more authority than the owners/producers, get out and start your own company.

 

This one is pretty rich too. I haven't rolled my eyes that much in a single post in a long time.

Nah,that review was far too stupid to be MCA. Also it doesn't match his writing style,from what i have seen from his posts. 99% sure that it is not his. I am not one of his worshippers,just pointing it out neutrally.

 

It's funny to imagine cheery old Fergus getting angry and demanding to be respected

 

So we know that Tim Cain husband works there. Who else?

 

Not saying this doesn't provide a valuable perspective into RPG companies we are unlikely to get otherwise, but you have to weigh that against the fact people who are quitting or getting fired are the sort of people who are likely to report that their efforts didn't receive the recognition they were due.

Qualifications aside, having the management and owners of a California-based entertainment company degenerate into a lazy aristocracy that cares more about their real estate and networking than productivity should surprise no one. The Hollywood mindset infects anyone who attains the mildest bit of success in that state, and I mean anyone.

 

That's a pathetic amount of cuckoldry/self-serving-give-me-a-job-because-I'm-a-woman crap in the Obsidian reviews. As well as so many people jealous that Josh Sawyer gets to be project director/lead designer so many times.

Nah, it's Urquhart and Parker, made all too public during the Project Eternity livestream.

Wouldn't be surprised if Fergie puts a lot of blame on him for Avellone's departure. He would be partially correct.

 

Good thread. Will read and edit this post later.

 

That's the sort of comment you have to take with a grain of salt.

Everyone knows the circumstances of the video game industry and how it is to be a third-party developer working for a publisher during the 2000s. It's the sort of thing a frustrated underling who doesn't have to deal directly with publishers would think about the company's situation, never mind that 8/10 or 9/10 of all the other third-party developers had closed their doors.

 

I wonder who the minus part could be referring to...

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

 

Parker was primarily responsible for the mess that was Alpha Protocol. If he still call the shots, he is causing a lot of problems.

Yes, but the irony is that I got the impression that the recent changes regarding this issue (e.g., puting Patel as a lead narrative) are motivated by this kind of absurd feedback. I think that Sawyer recent change of tone about traditional design was also motivated about the moronic "abandon the 90s design and get on with the times" criticism.