Creative Assembly reviews

Location. Horsham is a boring commuters town that doesn't have the infrastructure or services to support it's growth. Housing is expensive, nearly London expensive, and you will likely not get paid enough to comfortably live here unless you stick around for several years. As junior employee, half your salary is probably going to rent, given you are willing to share a place. To me, the largest issue at Creative Assembly is that it's too comfortable in using it's old technology for Total War. There isn't enough fresh blood that is pushing the boundaries, especially new middle/seniors level members that can use their experience to do so. As mentioned in the first bit, pay is below average, unless you are willing to spend 5+ years here, then maybe it becomes passable, especially given it's in the southeast. Communication between teams can be absent, Creative Assembly should employ directors that try to actively promote all departments to communicate, or use another strategy to achieve this.

There has been a true exodus of talent recently, with many of the key people that were actually doing the heavy lifting quitting. While your CV may increase in value for every year spent at CA by virtue of CA's name alone, expect your actual skills to deteriorate. There is no training and the tools, tech and pipelines you work with are increadibly outdated, so most of what you learn here isn't of much value in the industry as a whole. The politics are strong. Career opportunities are extremely poor, there are some old boy cliques in charge and they want to surround themselves with obedient friends, not critical hardworking people. There is no transparent performance tracking system or standards to meet to be eligible for promotion. Bonus was terrible this year (less than 1 month's pay) and again not transparant. I don't get the feeling complaints reach the top management, else the middle management and the cliques would have been dealt with long ago. Salary is bad compared to the cost of living in Horsham, as the rents are extremely high and the houses are tiny and of poor quality. Don't forget there is 70-100 pounds of council tax to pay every month as well and the electricity bills will get high. There are some more affordable villages in the general area, but since you have to pay the overpriced rail tickets, renting in a cheaper area is not worth it. If you earn less than 40k GBP per annum you'll be struggling to rent own place and likely to end up having to share a house with other unfortunates.