Wolcen Studio Reviews

This review is not meant to express spite, it is meant to warn potential employees about an easy trap to fall into. Wolcen Studio is currently run by money-craving salesman who do not understand how to make video games. They only want to make successful products, and would fall right into the newest money-making trend just for the sake of doing money, regardless of the impact of the quality of their product or the well-being of their team (or players). Over years, they took bad upon bad decisions and everything was barely held together by the strength of a few key workers (all of which have left since, or experienced burnout). The direction is entirely deaf to learning how to make quality experiences and such, only focus on very short-term ambitions (which are everchanging, based on what they last played or heard). For people who actually make the game, this translates into volatile priorities, no visibility, unjustified pressure surges (something became instantly urgent for no sensible reason) and absolutely no recognition in the process. In the past two years, countless people have fled this sinking ship, at various hierarchy levels. The company has been rushing into hiring process to hide the issue, but this results in teams without seniority or product-knowledge, no will to perform and a persistently toxic cloud which shades every interaction. People are either unaware of the company's behavior (because they're new) and thus fall candidly into traps (and toss weeks of work down the toilet because validation processes are fiddly), or they're so burnt they don't even work anymore, they ask to be remote and give a sign of health once a month or something. But that's ok, Wolcen Studio keeps paying them because they want to keep that illusion of having senior members who care. The company will seem like they try to learn, try to take care of their employees, but they really won't. It's all smoke, they think people are dumb enough to believe and that things will fall down into place because it has worked before. Needless to say the way they treat employees extends largely to minorities, gender, personal choices and preferences, but in the ironically-new way that they make everyone feel equally bad.

Management here doesn't seem to learn from the mistakes of others. everyone knew the game was still a work in progress a week before release, we all played it. Admittedly I'd say we aren't delusional to think that we birthed the best ARPG ever either. There wasn't enough time to fix it all. Despite all this, no attempt was made to increase server capacity. Everyone knew the pre release figures, and capacity was less than 1/20th. The team was literally told to wait and see. Its ok D3 bungled it launch too. Personally its this other people do it too so its ok mentality that ruined wolcen.