Great people - awful, awful management. - Quality Assurance Analyst Bossa Studios Employee Review

1.0
7 Oct 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Bossa has some of the best and brightest UK games industry working there. The creative energy and potential of the team is unmatched and you could not ask for better co-workers. Fairly nice benefits, especially for a company in the UK.

Cons

The management is beyond terrible. Narcissistic and self-obsessed with their own ideas, they are completely out of touch with the industry and their place within it. Despite having created and incredible creative team, they seem determined not to trust them to do their own jobs, and have even deliberately sunk projects for abritrary reasons (or through their own ego), whilst at the same time letting budget-draining, ego fueled zombie projects cripple the company for years at a time. There were many times I would see people working late, crying at their desks or stressed beyond reason at the behaviour and expectations of management, and the trickle down effects of their incompetence. From what I know from friends that still work there, this is still something of a problem. They are also completely clueless about how to properly market a game, relying on "viral success" and tricking influencers into doing all their marketing for them, for free, instead of paying for a properly planned marketing campaign. To be clear, this is not the fault of the marketing team themselves, but rather the upper management who are deluded into thinking they can be viral successes every single time they release a game and never spend a penny on actual marketing - unless that marketing is some ego stroking release party. This results in completely ridiculous and out of touch sales targets, based on a completely unrealistic view of the companies popularity. And when those out of touch targets aren't met, they don't blame themselves, they blame customers, or the development team instead. If that wasn't bad enough, theres also absolutely no way to leave genuine critical feedback and have them actually take it on board. The management team makes decisions in a closed room, and then leaves the dev teams to deal with the fallout of those decisions. They aren't consulted, they have no way to genuinely give input into projects - they must do what the management team thinks is best, whether or not that's based in reality or actual market understanding.

Explore other reviews about Bossa Studios

3.0
13 Jan 2025
Anonymous contractor
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Very lovely and talented people

Cons

Really bad (non-mandatory but strong peer pressure) crunch

5.0
25 Jul 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people are the best I have ever worked with, and care a lot about the game we're making. I have a lot of flexibility with working remotely, great work-life balance, and appreciate the trust given by production and management. There have been a few changes over the last few years but it feels like we are in the best place we've ever been in.

Cons

The games industry as a whole right now is not in a great place however leadership has kept us in the loop with how we are doing which gives me confidence.

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