Dire Wolf Digital reviews

The entire place is horribly mismanaged. If they hire you on they'll do so with the promise of timely transition to full time and regular pay raises, neither of which has been true for a few years for several employees. Expect to work upwards of 60-70 hour weeks regularly with no paid overtime whatsoever. Expect to have well laid plans utterly destroyed when the owner of the company decides to add or cut features on a whim, even a day before release. If you have a dispute with a coworker, expect the owner to fire whichever worker he likes less. Expect to get paid significantly below industry standard. Expect your coworkers to drop out like lies as they quickly find places that pay better and treat the employees better. This place can be a useful stepping stone but I would not suggest planning to make a career out of working here.

The other side of the coin for the project / work life at Dire Wolf is that when things don't go according to plan, a common strategy is to work longer hours with little forewarning or flexibility on the matter. Also, engineers who are keen to develop a specific skill set or specialization have been known to be re-tasked onto projects or tasks that they are uninterested in (although my personally appreciated these opportunities). The former is a work culture thing, and could be changed via management, but the latter I believe to be symptomatic of the smaller studio size - a specialized skill set isn't always necessary, and when the demand for a specialization diminishes producers will look for new ways to benefit from the engineer. If you have a specific skill you're really interested in pursuing, you'll likely have to fight for it and get into the political thicket to represent your interests. I feel that same "political" advice applies to advocating for yourself in promotion or annual salary update discussions. As for office politics, there's certainly some at play here. I was fortunate in that I tended to avoid it, and that suited me just fine. The studio has a problem with transparency at higher levels, so if you're not a lead or a producer there are things that will be kept "casually confidential". Sharing salary, bonuses information is greatly frowned upon, people have been encouraged to not tell anyone if their last day is coming up, etc. I believe that the company isn't acting at a malicious level, but if full 100% transparency at all times is a thing that you feel strongly about, there have been employees who have fought that battle and lost, so it's worth considering this (I'd peg Dire Wolf at a 66-80% transparency rate - and much of that is, you can talk to the owner, producers, or your lead whenever you want and if you ask a direct question I'd expect a direct honest reply). Salaried pay will be generally lower than non-gaming industry equivalent jobs. Be suspect of any promises of profit sharing or bonuses as part of a job offer, as I received no profit share funds and the closest thing to a bonus I received was not what I would have called a bonus but rather a contract. I personally feel that this con was collectively outweighed by the pro's but it bears mentioning (I just treat this as the "Game Industry Tax").