Great talent, poor leadership - Anonymous employee Crystal Dynamics Employee Review

I actually really loved working here! It was my favorite place of all the companies I've worked for. I felt trusted to make creative decisions, the work/life balance was amazing, the benefits were the best I've had, there were fun perks and swag, I felt surrounded by talented coworkers, I was happy with my salary which was adjusted each year for inflation at the very least, and I felt like career growth was more possible here than other places I've been.

Unfortunately I was affected by layoffs, which was a real bummer. There are some really bad decision-makers up top (below C-suite); people who control creative direction of projects. They are extremely slow to make decisions and change their minds constantly and there are often too many cooks in the kitchen which results in large project pivots, unclear direction in art/gameplay/narrative, and more than anything, causes sooo much wasted time and money. The company at large would be in a much better place financially if they had better creative leadership. There can also be a little too much "Get hyped cause we're the best company ever! We change people's lives! This company is so special" kinda talk in the all-hands meetings. Like, come on, it's still a video game company...they will 100% lay you off without blinking if they feel financial strain Also, something specific: they haven't done them in a while but when they do an all-company event (flying everyone in to one place) it's super awkward that they make all employees try to solve company problems, instead of working with their teams on their projects or do team building. For example, when they did their Seattle get-together they made us all responsible for coming up with ways the company could profit from our empty/underused studio space, debate what communication programs we should renew licenses for, stuff like that - it was just weird. *This con section looks large, but I really did love working here! It just takes less words to say what's good versus what isn't

Benefits are fairly good. Projects and the people themselves actually working on the game are great to work with, it a shame leadership is not the same.

This is not a good company to work for. Poor leadership who pretend everything is going great but don't care about their staff, This company has been on a decline since The marvel avengers game they failed in. They continuing to quietly do layoffs while trying to promote themselves as a good company to work for. Salaries are definitely lower than the average for bay area studios. There is zero loyalty to employees, I've seen them layoff someone who was basically the assistant to head of the company for 7 years, They have even laid off head of Operations who had been with them for 25 years! HR dangles the possibility of salary raises to senior employees to keep them at the studio longer but they never deliver. Overall I don't recommend this place even with the state of the industry,