- Beenox has frequently and in many ways messed up or willingly gave terrible deals because employees had no other choice. Here's a small selection:
1. The studio cannot hire people because of head count limitations from Activision, but it keeps good employees as interns for more than 12 months. They're cheaper and they don't go in the head count this way. If you're considering an internship at Beenox, I'd advise to have another plan after.
2. The studio messed up the documentation for many workers on a visa. This failure meant that some workers saw their immigration denied or had to start the process all over again. If you're considering a job at Beenox and you're coming internationally, I'd advise to do your own research and not to trust HR.
3. The studio public stance is that in order to earn a promotion you have to take the responsibilities of the role you want to have before you even have it. This wouldn't be so bad, but there are instances of employees replacing leads for more than a year and never seeing a cent in bonus or a promotion because promotion budgets are limited. In that sense, you're always in competition with your coworkers. You won't become senior because you have the knowledge, the responsibilities and the experience of the role. You'll become senior if you have all that and do more than your coworkers. If you're considering Beenox as a junior, I'd advise changing company after you get experience because otherwise you won't be able to progress.
- The studio culture is bad:
This year, the company updated its values. The new values are actually not that bad, but unfortunately the corporate side of things does not follow them or has a bad faith interpretation of them.
For example, the old values used to have the value "Balance" which obviously, and as per the old guidebook, meant "work-life balance". When questioned why this value was no longer present in any of the new values, the studio's head answered "Balance was never about work-life balance. It was about making sure that every one had the same workload. I.E. everyone did similar overtime." Coincidentally, this year also saw a rise in overtime.
One of the new value that came up this year is "Own the Outcome" with a goal of having more accountability. This became very important after the failure and permanent closure of Call of Duty Warzone Mobile. Unfortunately, this value only lives on paper as all the decision makers on the failed project got promoted while many real workers got laid off, The studio never addressed the failure. Even after the project got permanently canned, the studio kept saying it was positive.
- The actual work is quite a mess on the production side:
Microsoft forced the layoffs of all QA which meant the layoff of many talented people at Beenox. This short-sighted decision caused tons of expertise being lost, slowed development and made it much harder.
Also, due to poor production, it is very difficult to get work approved and committed. Responsibilities are not clear and some obvious required work can be hard to get going.