Andromeda Development was Deeply Troubled According to Anonymous VFX Artist
The release of Bioware’s Mass Effect: Andromeda has been a controversial one. While not all the reviews have been negative, players have taken umbrage with the graphics, even going so far as to harass members of the dev team. Now, an anonymous company review from a former VFX Artist has surfaced on Glassdoor.
If the source is to be believed, at least thirteen department leads were lost during the five-year development cycle. The details, posted below, include numerous reports of insufferable work conditions and poor employee treatment. This isn’t an unusual practice in the games industry, but the allegations paint a more complete picture of a studio facing difficulties during development.
The following are many (but not all) of the grievances aired about Bioware on Glassdoor:
- “Bioware Edmonton and Montreal symbiosis is broken. Lots of conflicts and bro culture.”
- “Lost over 13 leads (game design, art, audio, prog, senior core leads, etc) in 5 years at Bioware Montreal on Mass Effect. Edmonton lost only 3. It is clear that Edmonton has the bigger part of the stick when it comes to purge Leads and Producers who are not aligned with their leadership style.”
- “Putting people on performance improvement program (PIP Program) is the new tactics to get rid of people. Once again more than 10 people in Montreal got slammed with this bureaucratic uppercut to let go people that are not bending to Edmonton leadership styles in the last revision cycle. This approach is used by the Montreal Leadership to purge the mess from the lack of vision cause by upper management in the last 4 years (throwing people under the bus to protect bad core management)”
- “Renaming crunch to Finaling mode. Which means company pays for your lunch but you have only 30 minutes to eat and then getting back on the keyboard. Was lasting for over 2 months and was a real catastrophy.”
- “Retaliation and harassment is sadly a reality. If you talk and ask questions you will be tag as a trouble maker and end up in a bad position.”
- “HR won’t help you out. They will deny the current harassment from Monreal management by ignoring and not documenting the facts. In other words if you leave don’t talk. Just let it go…”
- “Many benifits got cut due to too much time extension to get the game done.”
Mass Effect: Andromeda is out now on PS4, PC and Xbox One.
SOURCE: Wccftech