PerBlue Reviews

It devastates me to say this, but the CEO, Justin Beck, is actively driving this company into the ground. He actively undermines his teams. He treats non-technical workers and teams horribly. He claims compensation is competitive. While I have no first-hand knowledge of the pay of other employees, I have heard generally that pay at PerBlue is roughly 2/3rds of market labor prices, which matched my experience. Beck's business ideas are, quite frankly, very bad. His business and game ideas are poorly researched, have no written business plan, are often unrelated to the company vision or goals, and fall apart quickly under any scrutiny or self-reflection. He seems incapable of incorporating any new information into his worldview, including the evaluation of his business ideas. He so resolutely refuses to listen to the experience of his extremely talented staff if any of their ideas or experience goes against his personal individual beliefs, interests, and fantasies. When he delegates the work of validating and implementing his ideas to PerBlue's extremely competent new product teams, he refuses to let them have the ownership necessary to kill his ideas and make something actually good, as they are fully capable of doing. This is completely demoralizing, wastes months and years of product development time, and ultimately leaves the company lurching from one bad idea to the next with no coherent vision or direction. The executives actively undermine the extremely talented women at all levels of the company. They actively refuse to do the personal work required to make the company more inclusive and undermine diversity and inclusion efforts by other employees at the company. The top leadership is a "Boys Club" and there is absolutely no indication that will change any time soon. The executives consistently undervalue any work that women do at the company and have a pattern of undermining women in leadership positions until they quit. And worst of all, they refuse to acknowledge or take any meaningful action to fix these issues at the company. And while I'm sure they will respond to this comment with some platitudes about how the company values diversity and is an inclusive place to work, I have heard so many stories from both current and former employees that actively contradicts that messaging; it's just more refusal to face the tough cultural issues facing the company. Perhaps someday they will change, but I've stopped holding my breath. As of now, you might notice that there are a lot of open positions at PerBlue. This is because people are leaving en-mass while the executive leadership team is actively refusing to acknowledge the grave retention problems facing the company. There is a widespread lack of trust in the direction of the company and specifically in the CEO and COO. Most (but certainly not all) of the employees that were cultural pillars of this company have left to have wildly successful careers elsewhere, no longer held back by the PerBlue's leadership. Tragically, none of this feedback is new to the executives. Other former colleagues have told me they have voiced similar concerns to the executives for years, both while they were employed and during exit interviews. This feedback is intentionally, systematically, and aggressively ignored. That complete refusal to even briefly consider the leadership issues at PerBlue leaves me with very little hope for the company. Will PerBlue still be a good place to launch a career in games of the back of a flailing company? Yeah, I think probably so. Would I recommend PerBlue as a place to work over someplace like Blizzard? Absolutely, every day. Can I, in good faith, currently recommend PerBlue as a good place to work? It absolutely breaks my heart, but I can not.