- the company is a B2B service provider that could be a cultural shock for people coming over from other creative studios. This causes a weird dissonance where management is fully focused on pleasing the client and fulfilling contracts rather than considering what could be the best for the project.
With Gigantic as an example, ABG did their absolute best on all technical levels but could have been way more aggressive in fighting for things way more important to players than just going with features that nobody needs (but were part of the contract). Though this was mostly due to the publisher's reluctance of public testing (raised often enough by ABG!), there's still a lot of yay-say philosophy in other projects that damage the project and the team's health.
- missing seniority in non-programming fields and missing career paths.
- the company is in Noord-Brabant so salaries are lower compared to Randstadt. They are quite competitive for Prod and Programming but can be insulting for any junior and some mid-level roles, especially QA, Arts and Design.
- a lot of potential projects not working out for the same reasons that don't seem to be addressed.
- there's no real long-term plan for the company, Really good people are let go if project's don't work out. ABG is in the toughest spot right now facing multiple projects ending roughly the same time and the company feels unprepared handling this. We are definitely surviving this but definitely feels like something that should have been foreseen long time ago.