Once was truly great, now I would avoid at all costs.
Pros
- The people are undeniably the thing that once made Kwalee the best place to work. Some of the most friendly, kind and hardworking people worked / work there. - You'll learn to be jack of all trades, I gained pretty invaluable experience in a load of different areas of the games industry. Different genres, different workflows etc.
Cons
- You will be given the lowest salary they think they can possibly get away with. Some of them felt criminally low, with inconsistencies all over the place. But don't fret, they have an army of higher ups with Head, VP and C level titles that are payed 5-10x the average wage at the company. - False advertising in all aspects of their hiring process including outright lies about Team Building events, EOTM schemes and 'Creative Wednesday' which hasn't existed as the free for all game jam/pitching session for well over a year. They have been cancelling all of these initiatives that made people happy to save a few quid. - Insufferable upper management team brought on to try and save the company from it's inevitable doom. People that really don't care about you and openly admit to it. Human Resources that couldn't be less human, run by someone that proudly states that he is there 'to protect the business' and doesn't care about the people or their wellbeing. These people are sort of the 2nd generation of this role where the 1st generation either failed and got hired on top of, or outright fell out with other people and left. - Long lasting low morale. To put it blunty, the company doesn't actually make any money and hasn't done really for several years. They must be hemorraghing cash straight from the owner's pocket and that well will run dry eventually. This has caused people not to see a bonus since 2021 (even with constant reminders that 'we will start seeing bonuses again soon!' in company wide emails). This played it's part in killing the general morale in the studio, with people feeling stuck and miserable for several years now. - Games that lack passion, innovation and creativity. There are plenty of extremely talented people in the development teams at Kwalee, but their talents are wasted on these dry games that lack passion behind them. They make their development choices based on KPIs that they claim to understand but haven't produced a 'hit' in years while other studios and publishers in the same area of the industry are seemingly pumping them out. - Exploitation and manipulation. They are very obviously exploiting under developed countries for 'cheap labour'. They are manipulating these employees in Bangalore and similar areas of the world into thinking they will be treated equally to the rest of the company when that just isn't true. The worst example of this is dangling the 'we might move you to the UK' carrot in front of them. It's disgusting how many employees in the Bangalore office or remote in similar countries have been told they might get the opportunity to move over when that is basically another lie. Kwalee have then made some bizzare decisions to move over a few select employees (one in a positon they had already overhired for) to keep that dream alive for the rest of them. - Layoffs. They are laying off people and rehiring similar positions in cheaper countries. The layoffs have been a public disaster with people online and in the general games industry being disgusted at them laying employees off while also claiming to want to continue growing the headcount into the 400s. They can't sustain with the current spend (with no money coming in) so are trying to cut salary costs down as much as possible. I truly believe no job is safe in the UK office if they think they can hire it cheaper elsewhere.