Pros
You get to work with experienced and skilled developers, of which many wants to help you grow and learn. Pay is great for new programmers the game industry. Wonderful and fantastic parties.
Cons
The game studio is divided in siloes that don't share the same goals. This leads to dysfunctional communication, lack of progress, as well as a lack of a clear vision. Strong presence of office politics; persuade the right people, "play the game", and pretend like any issues are non-existent to maintain a facade amongst people. "Buddy politics" & nepotism. If you're friends with the right people and if your partner needs an internship, this is the place to be. Crunch and crunch. Studio claimed to have stopped crunching when I joined, but the crunch was inevitable from the start. No paid overtime of course. Lack of ambition. Whenever I found poorly architectured and written code the response was often "wouldn't be the first time, so be it" or "oh it's just an assertion". "This should really be refactored, but..". As a junior, I wanted to learn and felt I had to quit if I didn't want to be institutionalized like the seniors. Can't retain developers. Many quit so often that you barely get to know them. One reason they can't retain developers is that they don't care if their employees are happy, they wouldn't move a senior in my team after 10+ years so the dev quit. So much experience and knowledge was lost with every senior leaving. Short term thinking like this hurts the studio in the long run. Tries to build an image of being a super healthy company that has a collective bargain's agreement with the union but doesn't follow the collective bargain agreement and don't care about its sentiment. Managers said they own me in the current position I'm in, won't move me or let me control my own paths - as if I can't work with my dream position at another company. Managers have been belittling, telling me I'm naive to think the world could be a better place, as well as telling me that the grass isn't greener on the other side. The grass was greener on the other side. I had to leave as quickly as possible. Come here if you want your passion to die.