It appears that the development cycle of Bioware’s Mass Effect Andromeda has been rather troubled.
Early Mass Effect Andromeda reviews have been rather disappointing, and over the past week a lot of players have expressed their dismay over the game’s characters animations. Certain ‘fans’ even went as far to sent personal threats to the game’s former animator.
An anonymous former Bioware VFX artist has now posted a company review on website Glassdoor, which paints a troubled picture of Andromeda’s development. The former BioWare Montréal employee claims to have worked at the studio for more than 5 years, during which more than 13 Mass Effect development leads have allegedly been lost. Down below you’ll find the bigger part of his review:
- "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."
If true, this review highlights a troubled situation at BioWare indeed. Mass Effect Andromeda is out today for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
