Over on GlassDoor a former VFX Artist who wishes to remain anonymous, says they experienced horrible working conditions. The former employee stated the following..
- Bioware Edmonton and Montreal symbiosis is broken. Lots of conflicts and bro culture.
- Lost over 13 leads (game design, art, audio, prog, senior core leads, etc) in 5 years at Bioware Montreal on Mass Effect. Edmonton lost only 3. It is clear that Edmonton has the bigger part of the stick when it comes to purge Leads and Producers who are not aligned with their leadership style.
- Putting people on performance improvement program (PIP Program) is the new tactics to get rid of people. Once again more than 10 people in Montreal got slammed with this bureaucratic uppercut to let go people that are not bending to Edmonton leadership styles in the last revision cycle. This approach is used by the Montreal Leadership to purge the mess from the lack of vision cause by upper management in the last 4 years (throwing people under the bus to protect bad core management).
- Renaming crunch to Finaling mode. Which means company pays for your lunch but you have only 30 minutes to eat and then getting back on the keyboard. Was lasting for over 2 months and was a real catastrophy.
- Retaliation and harassment is sadly a reality. If you talk and ask questions you will be tag as a trouble maker and end up in a bad position.
- HR won’t help you out. They will deny the current harassment from Montreal management by ignoring and not documenting the facts. In other words if you leave don’t talk. Just let it go.
- Many benefits got cut due to too much time extension to get the game done.
Since this is BioWare, it has many believing that employees working on Mass Effect: Andromeda experienced the same kind of working conditions. It’s also worth mentioning that the submitter was anonymous and did not reveal their identity.
