I worked at Hi-Rez Studios full-time for more than a year

Cons

- General attitude suggested that employment was viewed as a kindness or charity, rather than a mutually beneficial exchange of services for compensation. "He pays your bills" was not an uncommon utterance in the face of the slightest critique or criticism of the work enviroment or company direction reflected against the CEO. - Employee expertise was mostly disregarded. Development was extremely stressful due to the inappropriate recycling of technology despite the unanimous advisement from engineers. Design decisions were often times mandated despite the designer's input or even directed because of the designer's absence during a work mandated convention out of the country. - Initiative is frowned upon. In a handful of cases, popular improvements were rejected with explicit acknowledgement that they were improvements, but that the CEO didn't care if they were improvements, it was a matter of what the CEO wanted, in no uncertain terms. In one particular case, an art and design decision was made by negotiating that the art director would partake in a basketball game, otherwise the improvement would be reverted. For a time, an employee had made a flow chart on a whiteboard of how changes would be mandated, assumed as the right course of action, and lead back to the starting point, but at no time would any of the changes be considered a mistake. - Pandering to the CEO's personal fads or tastes. Project direction changed daily, sometimes hourly, based on the most recent fad the CEO had been exposed to. Regularly, employees would try to find work that wasn't immediately relevant to the day's plan, as it was expected it would be thrown away once the CEO returned from lunch. An employee once described, as a coping mechanism, their work as crafting mandalas and wiping them away at the end of the day. On various occasions, the CEO requested that female characters' be improved by hypersexualizing them. - Work happens on the CEO's personal schedule. Playtests were sometimes not allowed if the CEO was not present, would be delayed because the CEO was unwilling to concede in a multiplayer match of a competing game, or canceled because the CEO's after-work basketball game with coworkers would conflict. - Misleading hiring and interviewing practices. At least in my case, I applied for an announced project, was interviewed for a position on the project, was tested with questions themed upon the project, and only learned of my change in assignment when I arrived at my desk on the first day and received confused looks while trying to access said project, to then be told I was assigned to an unannounced project. - Misrepresented management. There were no agile methodolgies in actual practice. The assigned producer was absent from morning production meetings, which as previously mentioned, were treated at as largely moot as the plans would be upended after lunch. Production work was often handled by the more senior employees already fulfilling other full-time positions with no additional support. - Juvenile behavior during playtests. Some employees were not allowed to partake in playtests of their own projects because they were seen as insufficiently skilled at the game's competition. "Trash talking" from the CEO and some other employees was prevalent. There was a great deal of toxicity in the playtest room, leading to occasions of employees quiting the playtest in a fury, or the CEO shutting off other employee's machines during a playtest because their performance in the playtest was jeopardizing victory within the competition. - Very cliquey. An inner circle would be regularly invited to paid lunch with the CEO, "boss lunch", and said employees were largely given independence and influence over their own projects and others. Passing commentary from said individuals could become the new direction on a whim. - Micromanaged. It became a matter of defacto policy that the project should be hidden if the CEO was approaching, so that an impression of incomplete, in-progress work wouldn't lead to a drastic change based on an inaccurate impression of what the work would ultimately represent. - Ethically questionable business model practices. Whichever new character was to be sold would be constantly playtested by the CEO, but if the CEO was not victorious at the end of the playtest, the character would be made more powerful. This pattern lead to newer characters being unfairly capable in competition, motivating the players to purchase the latest character, only to have them properly balanced for fairness after the fact.