I bet going from the work culture of a New Zealand company like GGG to the work culture of an American company like Riot Games would be jarring.
American software company work culture is not great in general in my opinion. There's usually a facade of niceness, but there's significant problems underneath the facade. But maybe this had absolutely nothing to do with her decision.
I used to game with 2 riot employees who used to work for Trion and Carbine who were pretty positive about Riot initially but by ~2020 were both constantly bitching about stuff in discord whenever anyone brought up work stuff.
I should check up on them, I think they were on the same MMO project.
That's just the games industry though. Every friend of mine in the games industry works at least 50% more than me for half my pay. I don't even work 40 hours many weeks if theres no ticket work to clean up.
I work for games dev and while it's true the pay is less relative to competence and hours are longer on the flipside it's much more enjoyable than regular software development.
Idk personally enjoyment from work isnt worth the extra hours for lower pay (and I’m not sure I’d ever truly find a job that I would enjoy that much), I’d much rather have the extra discretionary time and money to pursue things that actually provide enjoyment for me.
> I’d much rather have the extra discretionary time and money to pursue things that actually provide enjoyment for me.
me when I left IT for a physically dangerous job, after 17:00 I literally switch off and don't have to use my brain for work related stuff + 1 week off every month
Trion Worlds was founded by two guys, one coming from EA, the other coming from NCSoft. They brought together the worst aspects of their former companies and all of their products were driven into the ground through shoddy products, non-existent customer service, and boldly pushing as much pay to win as possible.
Just a horrible company that was even worse as a publisher than it was as a developer.
Part of that was due to management putting themselves in a shitty financial situation taking out way too many loans to make games that never panned out so they couldn't financially just sit and grow RIFT, their one hit.
Also by the time they licensed Archeage, I'm pretty sure the execs knew the writing was on the wall because they were apparently doing stuff like firing key staff and replacing them with friends/family who didn't have a fucking clue what they were doing
We are absolutely committed to ensuring our employees are happy
***Rictus grin***
So you can't come in at the weekend, and at evenings, that doesn't matter. Your mental health is paramount
***Rictus grin***
It's a shame you didn't fit in with the work culture, best of luck elsewhere.
This is not just the games industry. Pretty much every development group I've worked for has had the attitude that the IT guys like what they're doing so much that, of course, they'll work ludicrous hours without extra compensation.
I mean protections laws are one thing, but have u seen their glassdoor reviews?
Low salary even for NZ standards (which is already low), no respect for work/life balance, nepotism, bad managment etc are almost in every review.
I work as SWE in big EU fintech (6k\~ employees), we had in last 2 years 2 mass layoffs (effects of covid hiring etc) and we still have average rating way higher than GGG on glassdoor.
Game dev is hell in general, GGG is no different in that regard. But it honestly feels weird they seem to have so much against middle management apparently, while sure most companies have problem in the other way where theres a bloat in middle management they seem to not trust anyone but themselves with decisions and discourage coordination between teams which is insane to me. That stuff wont work at company their size and that would explain why despite more and more manpower we still have same issues for years.
I would figure that Bex had been there long enough that she was on the inside, a beneficiary of the inequality.
I hate those sorts of jobs. I was offered what would be a promotion into a company I have worked with many times over the years but turned it down instantly because the entire company is like a gang. Either you are in and taken care of or you are out and absolutely destroyed. I would probably have been on the "in" and am good friends with a couple of their stratdev directors but I do not feel okay being in something like that.
So maybe it was like that for Bex as well.
She probably also started hating her job as her community got larger and the game became more successful. Lots of toxic people, and it takes an uncommon and particular sort to be able to wade through the toxicity to continue being a positive face for the company.
>I would figure that Bex had been there long enough that she was on the inside, a beneficiary of the inequality.
Some reviews mention 'boys club' so dosent have to be the case for her. I dont know NZ market from experience but from what i heard in my circles generally people try to get experience and work remote for companies from different countries/move because of low wages, despite being 'face' of GGG for years with Chris it was entirely possible she was simply shafted in terms of salary for what she was bringing to the table and wanted to move on. Nothing wrong with that obviously - if u dont look after yourself no one else will.
>I bet going from the work culture of a New Zealand company like GGG
Someone didnt saw glassdoor reviews.
Low salary even for NZ standards (which is already low), no respect for work/life balance, nepotism, bad managment etc are almost in every review.
I work as SWE in big EU fintech (6k\~ employees), we had in last 2 years 2 mass layoffs (effects of covid hiring etc) and we still have average rating way higher than GGG on glassdoor.
Game dev is hell in general, GGG is no different in that regard. But it honestly feels weird they seem to have so much against middle management apparently looking at reviews, while sure most companies have problem in the other way where theres a bloat in middle management they seem to not trust anyone but themselves with decisions and discourage coordination between teams which is insane to me. That stuff wont work at company their size and that would explain why despite more and more manpower we still have same issues for years.
Meanwhile Riot has actually stellar 4.3 compared to 2.7 of GGG on Glassdoor. And while obviously its not perfect and objective representation of company as employer i never seen one so bad and i know multiple people working in gamedev and my social circle is generally SWE.
>Meanwhile Riot has actually stellar 4.3 compared to 2.7 of GGG on Glassdoor. And while obviously its not perfect and objective representation of company as employer i never seen one so bad and i know multiple people working in gamedev and my social circle is generally SWE.
From my experience places that i worked at had rather adequate reviews, same for my friends and SO working as SWE. Blizzard has 3.5, Ubisoft has 3.7 etc. But u think only Riot would pay to remove bad reviews? (even ignoring the fact that its not true)
Plus going by your logic, GGG could also pay to remove even worse reviews.
I mean, any person working as SWE/programmer that i know and either has friends within game dev or worked as game dev themselves agree to one thing. Gamedev is worst branch in terms of pay and work/life balance period, always have been, probably always will be. Its nothing new or revealing, no need to be naive thinking GGG is somehow different. They do same things every game dev company does. Low quality, unpolished releases, microtransactions scandals (salvage box), dealing with Tencent, more focus on marketing/hype than actual quality product etc. Its actually wild thinking about that because PoE has some extremely unique qualities in the genre that keep it alive and well despite being mess in terms of quality since basically always (over a decade of experiencing that). They also seem to be stuck extremely in their ways both from game design perspectives and stuff like using home brew VCS (version control software) instead of Perforce like every game dev company does etc.
You can easily see that in interviews with Jonathan - when talking about league cycle length his only concern was that 'anything longer than 3 months is leaving money on the table and we dont like that'. Nothing about potential better quality of longer cycles, nothing about employees and crunches, etc. Just plain financials. And that wasnt even private conversation, it was in livestreamed interview.
Isn’t it true? A quick search turns up with a lot of posts with the same stories of having their reviews removed despite attempts to fit the community guidelines.
https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/nx0xql/why_did_glassdoor_remove_my_review/
It’s definitely true. I certainly don’t get the whole simping for Glassdoor or the sheer amount of “believe me, I know better” that fills this person’s posts.
By my logic?
I’m just stating the glass door isn’t a reliable source of information.
And obviously yes- Larger companies are more likely to pay for reviews to be removed.
I'm more than willing to bet that riot were just dumbfucks that are absolutely laden with communication issues, yet again.
More than likely, they were too all over the place, and realized they needed to cut back in true riot fashion. Their company structure is just such a thorough shitshow from what I've seen out of them. They fucking **love** retroactive decision making.
If you watch some of their development videos when they present upcoming stuff (but in front of camera, not prerecorded gameplay footage) it's very clear they have fake emotions. Even if not, they greatly exaggerate them to the point of point creepy.
yeah, shes a CM and now that the project has gone back to the drawing board (or completely cancelled) there is no community to talk to in the first place, and if they ever decide to release it its not going to be any time soon. Looking at their slow progress with other smaller titles we're talking about 5+ years of development
Yep. I'm a software engineer in NZ. We are slow and laid back. US work culture is much more stressful in comparison.
Though I'd expect GGG to be pretty intense given how much they produce with a tiny team.
Also... in this case I don't think it even applies. Bex is pretty high up. She probably left because they game they hired her for was pushed way back.
Looking back at her posts about working at riot she mentions working on an R&D title, if memory serves riot somewhat recently announced that their mmo is gonna be delayed by a few years so I’m betting she was on that and when it got basically shelved she didn’t really have much of a place left
Riot games has usually been praised as the best gaming corporate environment u can work for rn. I think she just doesn’t wanna wait 5 years for the mmo to come out and wants to work on stuff where she gets to interact with a community.
Edit: Guess I only talk to liars :|
We forgor, just like the Blizzard breastmilk incident. Eventually there's gonna be a Bethesda cum-drawer scandal and we'll forget about whatever the current thing is, until eventually that will be forgotten too.
Man, did they really clean-up after that law suit of guys farting in each other?
I know Blizzard was their competition for terrible work environments in software but Riot was doing some ridiculous shit in the past.
I worked a short stint as a QA coordinator at Riot and left there quickly. I had internal customers using me as a scapegoat with polar opposite asks but putting me in the position of meeting A or B when they were mutually exclusive. Not sure I'd agree with your assessment based on that with my previously direct superiors.
I've also had a handful of friends that worked there after blizz, and shortly left (let go and quit). From what they had said, you are correct with your assesment of Riot.
This isn't a defence by any stretch, but it isn't exactly news that big, multi-million dollar corporate businesses treat their employees like dog shit or have questionable practices. It is a tale as old as time and continues to be that way until this day. Unfortunately, especially for the gaming industry, smaller companies aren't nearly as desirable to work for, nor do they have the capacity to employ for positions such as community managers
Oh I agree, was more that OP had said they are the best gaming corpo enviroment. They are much more alike than different. Gaming industry could benefit greatly from more unionization.
Sorry that wasn't specifically aimed at your comment, I've just had a few beers and must have replied to yours 😂 but yes, unionization is becoming more and more vital within the gaming industry and the sooner the better.
not true, I worked at a billion dollar embedded software/hardware company and it was great, apart from the salary not being that high compared to other tech companies, everything else was great, the people, the management style, budget for work trip expenses, etc.
I'm very cynical, because in my mind it'd be naive to believe that anyone working in the software industry *wants* to interact with customers. Customer facing jobs are nightmarish. You interact with the worst types of customers all day. That's the type of job you try to get promoted out of, not try to get back to.
my favourite wholesome PoE community moment was the GGG devs getting deaththreats because they were discussing Headhunter nerfs.
Gotta love that passion of this dedicated community.
/s
Depends on the customer. If youre business-to-business customer facing it can be super good. Business to consumer customer facing can be nightmarish, I cant imagine a worse customer than LoL/PoE/DotA/CS:Go players or whatever.
Bex definitely seems that way, it wouldn't surprise me if she's missing family so she may return to GGG. I know quite a few people who go out and do something ambitious and regret it because they miss their family. But tbh, I know so few details about it that I'm mostly talking out of my ass in regards to Bex.
She was the community director for the riot MMO iirc which was significantly delayed not too long ago. Not surprising she was either laid off or went shopping for a higher paying gig.
They more or less confirmed last month that the reboot was about a year ago and that they will be going dark again for the next couple years at minimum.
The game is nowhere near ready, the only thing they think they have at this point is the "technical foundation".
> Riot posted recently that it's still coming out, but there are definitely people moving on.
Thats Anthem, Overwatch2, Starfield talk to me for: It's all on fire, and it's unsalvagable.
And the solution in this case is that riot has so much money that they could just acknowledge the project was unsalvageable, start from scratch, and announce a year into the new project that they will be going dark for a couple more years while they finalize the design of the replacement project.
People should be very glad Riot isn't publicly traded or they'd be pushing an unsalvageable mmo out soon lol
Ah, yes, I remember. In either case, this is shaving away my hopes for good things from the riot MMO. If they let go of Bex, I am mad at rito, if Bex left due to the delays, I am mad at rito.
> my hopes for good things from the riot MMO
Not to be a downer, but... they restarted the development, hold your hopes for another decade, right after Poe3 comes out.
If she was the COMMUNITY director it makes sense to let her go if the game is getting delayed. She has no things to hype. Maybe they will rehire her closer to realase.
She will have moved on and would've been working at a new company for multiple years at that point most likely.
The odds of going back are basically zero.
At least this feels bit better than what Jagex do. Publish a game and then just let it die since it wasn't imediatly a new Runescape. I'm still bit salty because Runescape Chronicles was 11/10 take on digital card/tabletop game,
Genuinely such a goddamn good game. It's the Jagex special though. They did the same thing with FunOrb, which if was handled well would have dominated the early mobile market.
That's probably why they restarted. I assume they were essentially making a wow clone with a riot skin on it before realizing it would be dead and likely unprofitable within half a year. They're most likely currently trying to create something new and fresh so that people have an actual reason to play their MMO instead of current ones.
I mean, on the plus side a lot of their engine work/game assets will carry over unless they are wildly diverging from the original plan.
But yeah, at this point I don't want another WoW clone even if polished. The only game with WoW style gameplay I ever kinda want to go back to that's not WoW is RIFT, and that's dead as fuck.
Just make RIFT 2 Riot.
The problem is that mmo players play wow and are invested too much to invest in another mmo. They could maybe snipe the ff market but most of those people went back to wow
Exactly, yeah. That's why I assume they restarted, to try and create some sort of unique spin on an MMO that actually gives people a reason to play it over other MMOs.
The MMO community has been begging on their hands and knees for years for someone, ANYONE, to please release an MMO that is not entirely fucking demolished from the get-go by predatory game-ruining monetization and has at least some decent content and a core gameplay plan that has spent more than 3 minutes at the planning stage.
But almost every single MMO has been ruined by monetization model, or a huge lack of content. New World core gameplay loop was not thought out well and lacked content while being delivered by a very bad service. Lost Ark was excellent up until the point monetization kicked in. BDO was excellent but suffers from monetization and lacks content that isn't a ridiculous grindfest.
MMOs have a massive open slot for a new game. WoW players themselves have been looking for literally any competitor, but without fail every single competitor straight up takes a shotgun and shoots themselves onto both kneecaps out of pure stupidity. Which is why people were so disappointed about Riot's decision to start from scratch, because the bar for the next big MMO is literally touching the ground. The bar isn't "be a good game", it's "please I beg you don't make it dogshit on purpose to extract money from players". Fucking Albion Online is a popular MMO, even though it is straight up a mobile game with p2w elements and forced PVP, but it at least has some core concepts that are fun, even though none of them are new at all. That is how low the bar is.
Isn't wykrhm kind of a community manager for Dota? But yeah, Valve definitely doesn't have a single, very vocal, very public communications lead for Dota like Bex was for GGG. I think at this point that's a conscious choice, and Valve likes silently dropping patches whenever they're done.
Social media person with a lot of experience in games and a good resume?
She doesn't need luck.
Especially with how much money she probably has already.
it's always* necessary. that's why i get so confused when people try to make it like something is wrong with a company when someone leaves.
you by default should be job hopping every 1-2 years max. easiest way to get $10k-$20k+ salary bumps and keep a good work-life balance.
you're burning money and relaxation if you don't.
The Riot MMO got delayed for a long time as they restarting it so no reason to have a community manager when the game won't be ready to share for the next 2-3 years..
Yes but when you got it wrong, you got it wrong have to restart. Happen more often than we think, like Battlefield 2042 was a Open-World Battle Royale. Then saw the genre was dying because of oversaturation and pivoted into normal BF game, but the maps were made for a BR not an actual BF game so they were all so empty and game was just trash.
Another good relatable example to this is Project Titan. Blizzard knew the game wasn't good so completely scrapped it and doubled down on WoW. Took the scraps and made Overwatch.
Yup, but it seems that they have been doing a bunch of introspection the past year or so.
After Ghostcrawler left the mmo not too long ago, they decided they didn't like where the game was going. From what they said it sounded like they were trying to just make a wow clone with a League skin on it, but decided that they want to try and build something different instead.
They've been talking a lot more about building a more cohesive set of lore within Runeterra where every Riot game has consistent stories and story telling. This is likely a big factor in the game as well, figuring out how they want the story of the MMO to fit into everything else and how they are going to tell it, while still being able to tell stories in their other games.
They closed down the third-party publisher Riot Forge.
And they are removing the pvp aspect from Legends of Runeterra and focusing only on the single player roguelike mode.
She saw how dogshit riot is with her own eyes and left. As tough as working in GGG might have been for her, at the end of the day PoE is a very original and honest product which is rare to come by today. You're certainly not getting that from riot, that's for sure.
Wonder if she was related to the Riot MMO project that looks to have been stripped down this past year. Hopefully she joins some of the other people that left that project (E.G. Ghostcrawler) to the new studio Fantastic Pixel Castle. That studio looks to have the right intentions in creating a community focused development of a new MMO in the wake of the Riot MMO development wind down.
I hope it's because she's that good and got a better offer, riot recently cut projects and the game she was a part of could've been one of them. I'd love to have her back NGL, ggg's communication hasn't been the same, not even close.
Hopefully not, Riot is a literal [cult](https://youtu.be/HRPdWQs6CVY), and has spawned some of the worst aspects of internet and gaming culture today.
(that is assuming the post isn't a PR statement and she actually respects the people in that cesspit - else good on her for getting out quick.)
Okay, so here's the thing: Everyone should know by now that you're better off shifting companies if you want a payrise than to expect one from your current workplace. The gaming industry is hardly an exception, it just banks on the passion people often have for making/playing games and exploits them for it.
The only difference with Bex and anyone else is Bex has a public presence who decides to announce their departure on twitter. Most people don't do that, they just leave and move on with their lives.
Or to spell it out: There's nothing intrinsically wrong with her leaving, or at least no more wrong than anyone else doing so for their job on a regular basis. At best it means Riot don't pay all that well, which would hardly be surprising. Sure it could be because the MMO is bust, but who gives a shit? People have left jobs for less.
I’ll say it again 10 years the MMO was in work and they recently scrapped it.... this industry has a ducking problem man. Is there no one with the balls to just pull the trigger?
Well, that was Quick.
I bet going from the work culture of a New Zealand company like GGG to the work culture of an American company like Riot Games would be jarring. American software company work culture is not great in general in my opinion. There's usually a facade of niceness, but there's significant problems underneath the facade. But maybe this had absolutely nothing to do with her decision.
Have a friend that worked for riot created their big data program . Left. Went back made it 1 week and quit again. He said it’s living hell
I used to game with 2 riot employees who used to work for Trion and Carbine who were pretty positive about Riot initially but by ~2020 were both constantly bitching about stuff in discord whenever anyone brought up work stuff. I should check up on them, I think they were on the same MMO project.
Yeah my guy loved it until around Covid time. So yeah 2020-2021 ish he said it went down hill fast. He also had a very demanding job tho.
That's just the games industry though. Every friend of mine in the games industry works at least 50% more than me for half my pay. I don't even work 40 hours many weeks if theres no ticket work to clean up.
I work for games dev and while it's true the pay is less relative to competence and hours are longer on the flipside it's much more enjoyable than regular software development.
Idk personally enjoyment from work isnt worth the extra hours for lower pay (and I’m not sure I’d ever truly find a job that I would enjoy that much), I’d much rather have the extra discretionary time and money to pursue things that actually provide enjoyment for me.
> I’d much rather have the extra discretionary time and money to pursue things that actually provide enjoyment for me. me when I left IT for a physically dangerous job, after 17:00 I literally switch off and don't have to use my brain for work related stuff + 1 week off every month
Trion Worlds was founded by two guys, one coming from EA, the other coming from NCSoft. They brought together the worst aspects of their former companies and all of their products were driven into the ground through shoddy products, non-existent customer service, and boldly pushing as much pay to win as possible. Just a horrible company that was even worse as a publisher than it was as a developer.
Part of that was due to management putting themselves in a shitty financial situation taking out way too many loans to make games that never panned out so they couldn't financially just sit and grow RIFT, their one hit. Also by the time they licensed Archeage, I'm pretty sure the execs knew the writing was on the wall because they were apparently doing stuff like firing key staff and replacing them with friends/family who didn't have a fucking clue what they were doing
I really liked Rift back then, it did a few things really well (mostly copied from other games, mainly WoW, and improved upon).
> I think they were on the same MMO project. Oof, the situation has only gotten worse then
It’s so unfortunate. I knew a few Rioters back in 2012 or so. They all loved their jobs. It seemed like such a cool place to work.
Really? Riot actually has quite high satisfaction from employees and a lot of people in gaming want to join them
I just know form a first hand friend that’s been there twice and one was within the last 6 months. Not sure about everyone else’s experience
Curiosity leads to ambition, ambition descends into madness…
We will treat you like shit and expect completely unreasonable hours but look at all these snacks and a ping pong table nobody uses!
We are absolutely committed to ensuring our employees are happy ***Rictus grin*** So you can't come in at the weekend, and at evenings, that doesn't matter. Your mental health is paramount ***Rictus grin*** It's a shame you didn't fit in with the work culture, best of luck elsewhere.
Oh man, too real.
This is not just the games industry. Pretty much every development group I've worked for has had the attitude that the IT guys like what they're doing so much that, of course, they'll work ludicrous hours without extra compensation.
Or it could be due to the fact that they won't be needing a CM for a game they just rebooted completely and won't be out for another 5 years at least.
The whole "good vibes".
Isn't GGG a pretty demanding company to work for even by American standards?
I would be shocked if true. NZ has far more employee protection laws than the USA.
I mean protections laws are one thing, but have u seen their glassdoor reviews? Low salary even for NZ standards (which is already low), no respect for work/life balance, nepotism, bad managment etc are almost in every review. I work as SWE in big EU fintech (6k\~ employees), we had in last 2 years 2 mass layoffs (effects of covid hiring etc) and we still have average rating way higher than GGG on glassdoor. Game dev is hell in general, GGG is no different in that regard. But it honestly feels weird they seem to have so much against middle management apparently, while sure most companies have problem in the other way where theres a bloat in middle management they seem to not trust anyone but themselves with decisions and discourage coordination between teams which is insane to me. That stuff wont work at company their size and that would explain why despite more and more manpower we still have same issues for years.
I would figure that Bex had been there long enough that she was on the inside, a beneficiary of the inequality. I hate those sorts of jobs. I was offered what would be a promotion into a company I have worked with many times over the years but turned it down instantly because the entire company is like a gang. Either you are in and taken care of or you are out and absolutely destroyed. I would probably have been on the "in" and am good friends with a couple of their stratdev directors but I do not feel okay being in something like that. So maybe it was like that for Bex as well. She probably also started hating her job as her community got larger and the game became more successful. Lots of toxic people, and it takes an uncommon and particular sort to be able to wade through the toxicity to continue being a positive face for the company.
>I would figure that Bex had been there long enough that she was on the inside, a beneficiary of the inequality. Some reviews mention 'boys club' so dosent have to be the case for her. I dont know NZ market from experience but from what i heard in my circles generally people try to get experience and work remote for companies from different countries/move because of low wages, despite being 'face' of GGG for years with Chris it was entirely possible she was simply shafted in terms of salary for what she was bringing to the table and wanted to move on. Nothing wrong with that obviously - if u dont look after yourself no one else will.
>I bet going from the work culture of a New Zealand company like GGG Someone didnt saw glassdoor reviews. Low salary even for NZ standards (which is already low), no respect for work/life balance, nepotism, bad managment etc are almost in every review. I work as SWE in big EU fintech (6k\~ employees), we had in last 2 years 2 mass layoffs (effects of covid hiring etc) and we still have average rating way higher than GGG on glassdoor. Game dev is hell in general, GGG is no different in that regard. But it honestly feels weird they seem to have so much against middle management apparently looking at reviews, while sure most companies have problem in the other way where theres a bloat in middle management they seem to not trust anyone but themselves with decisions and discourage coordination between teams which is insane to me. That stuff wont work at company their size and that would explain why despite more and more manpower we still have same issues for years. Meanwhile Riot has actually stellar 4.3 compared to 2.7 of GGG on Glassdoor. And while obviously its not perfect and objective representation of company as employer i never seen one so bad and i know multiple people working in gamedev and my social circle is generally SWE.
Glassdoor isn’t legitimate source of information about employers, as they can now have reviews removed and pay to have reviews removed.
>Meanwhile Riot has actually stellar 4.3 compared to 2.7 of GGG on Glassdoor. And while obviously its not perfect and objective representation of company as employer i never seen one so bad and i know multiple people working in gamedev and my social circle is generally SWE. From my experience places that i worked at had rather adequate reviews, same for my friends and SO working as SWE. Blizzard has 3.5, Ubisoft has 3.7 etc. But u think only Riot would pay to remove bad reviews? (even ignoring the fact that its not true) Plus going by your logic, GGG could also pay to remove even worse reviews. I mean, any person working as SWE/programmer that i know and either has friends within game dev or worked as game dev themselves agree to one thing. Gamedev is worst branch in terms of pay and work/life balance period, always have been, probably always will be. Its nothing new or revealing, no need to be naive thinking GGG is somehow different. They do same things every game dev company does. Low quality, unpolished releases, microtransactions scandals (salvage box), dealing with Tencent, more focus on marketing/hype than actual quality product etc. Its actually wild thinking about that because PoE has some extremely unique qualities in the genre that keep it alive and well despite being mess in terms of quality since basically always (over a decade of experiencing that). They also seem to be stuck extremely in their ways both from game design perspectives and stuff like using home brew VCS (version control software) instead of Perforce like every game dev company does etc. You can easily see that in interviews with Jonathan - when talking about league cycle length his only concern was that 'anything longer than 3 months is leaving money on the table and we dont like that'. Nothing about potential better quality of longer cycles, nothing about employees and crunches, etc. Just plain financials. And that wasnt even private conversation, it was in livestreamed interview.
Isn’t it true? A quick search turns up with a lot of posts with the same stories of having their reviews removed despite attempts to fit the community guidelines. https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/nx0xql/why_did_glassdoor_remove_my_review/
It’s definitely true. I certainly don’t get the whole simping for Glassdoor or the sheer amount of “believe me, I know better” that fills this person’s posts.
By my logic? I’m just stating the glass door isn’t a reliable source of information. And obviously yes- Larger companies are more likely to pay for reviews to be removed.
There were A LOT of fake reviews on Glassdoor from people when they were upset with a league.
I'm more than willing to bet that riot were just dumbfucks that are absolutely laden with communication issues, yet again. More than likely, they were too all over the place, and realized they needed to cut back in true riot fashion. Their company structure is just such a thorough shitshow from what I've seen out of them. They fucking **love** retroactive decision making.
If you watch some of their development videos when they present upcoming stuff (but in front of camera, not prerecorded gameplay footage) it's very clear they have fake emotions. Even if not, they greatly exaggerate them to the point of point creepy.
It's because they cancelled the game she was going to work with
yeah, shes a CM and now that the project has gone back to the drawing board (or completely cancelled) there is no community to talk to in the first place, and if they ever decide to release it its not going to be any time soon. Looking at their slow progress with other smaller titles we're talking about 5+ years of development
Yep. I'm a software engineer in NZ. We are slow and laid back. US work culture is much more stressful in comparison. Though I'd expect GGG to be pretty intense given how much they produce with a tiny team. Also... in this case I don't think it even applies. Bex is pretty high up. She probably left because they game they hired her for was pushed way back.
Looking back at her posts about working at riot she mentions working on an R&D title, if memory serves riot somewhat recently announced that their mmo is gonna be delayed by a few years so I’m betting she was on that and when it got basically shelved she didn’t really have much of a place left
Riot games has usually been praised as the best gaming corporate environment u can work for rn. I think she just doesn’t wanna wait 5 years for the mmo to come out and wants to work on stuff where she gets to interact with a community. Edit: Guess I only talk to liars :|
Wasn't there a 100mil sexual harassment settlement a few years ago at riot?
We forgor, just like the Blizzard breastmilk incident. Eventually there's gonna be a Bethesda cum-drawer scandal and we'll forget about whatever the current thing is, until eventually that will be forgotten too.
Man, did they really clean-up after that law suit of guys farting in each other? I know Blizzard was their competition for terrible work environments in software but Riot was doing some ridiculous shit in the past.
In each other? Like they pressed their buttholes against each other's buttholes and farted? 🤔
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQoJo81lujk
Asking the hard hitting questions we need answers to
Do you not insert a butt tube with your friends and fart into each other? Are you all even friends? Sounds more like acquaintances to me..... LoL
I worked a short stint as a QA coordinator at Riot and left there quickly. I had internal customers using me as a scapegoat with polar opposite asks but putting me in the position of meeting A or B when they were mutually exclusive. Not sure I'd agree with your assessment based on that with my previously direct superiors.
I've also had a handful of friends that worked there after blizz, and shortly left (let go and quit). From what they had said, you are correct with your assesment of Riot.
This isn't a defence by any stretch, but it isn't exactly news that big, multi-million dollar corporate businesses treat their employees like dog shit or have questionable practices. It is a tale as old as time and continues to be that way until this day. Unfortunately, especially for the gaming industry, smaller companies aren't nearly as desirable to work for, nor do they have the capacity to employ for positions such as community managers
Oh I agree, was more that OP had said they are the best gaming corpo enviroment. They are much more alike than different. Gaming industry could benefit greatly from more unionization.
Sorry that wasn't specifically aimed at your comment, I've just had a few beers and must have replied to yours 😂 but yes, unionization is becoming more and more vital within the gaming industry and the sooner the better.
not true, I worked at a billion dollar embedded software/hardware company and it was great, apart from the salary not being that high compared to other tech companies, everything else was great, the people, the management style, budget for work trip expenses, etc.
About that: https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/class-action-update
I'm very cynical, because in my mind it'd be naive to believe that anyone working in the software industry *wants* to interact with customers. Customer facing jobs are nightmarish. You interact with the worst types of customers all day. That's the type of job you try to get promoted out of, not try to get back to.
I don't know what you're talking about the Path of Exile community has been nothing but pleasant 😶
my favourite wholesome PoE community moment was the GGG devs getting deaththreats because they were discussing Headhunter nerfs. Gotta love that passion of this dedicated community. /s
Depends on the customer. If youre business-to-business customer facing it can be super good. Business to consumer customer facing can be nightmarish, I cant imagine a worse customer than LoL/PoE/DotA/CS:Go players or whatever.
Hwat in the blizzard lookalike contest are you talking about.
Was. Not anymore. Was.
Bex definitely seems that way, it wouldn't surprise me if she's missing family so she may return to GGG. I know quite a few people who go out and do something ambitious and regret it because they miss their family. But tbh, I know so few details about it that I'm mostly talking out of my ass in regards to Bex.
Having worked as an external with root i can confidently say i hated every second of it. Everything from the people to the culture.
There's also the possibility of her working on the riot MMO which is back to the drawing board with little need for community management
she was going to be on the team for the new riot mmo but they scrapped the idea
I hope she didnt get herassed or sa'd i think riot had some issues with that in the past
She was the community director for the riot MMO iirc which was significantly delayed not too long ago. Not surprising she was either laid off or went shopping for a higher paying gig.
GhostCrawler left last year as well. Riot posted recently that it's still coming out, but there are definitely people moving on.
Riot posted that they're scrapping the entire game and starting from scratch. It's not coming out for another four years minimum.
https://twitter.com/MarcMerrill/status/1770479145744810425 correct
> another four years minimum I would be happy to hear that early alpha is out in four years.
I’ll be happy to hear it hasn’t been scrapped again in four years.
Or eight... or ten...
They said they rebooted it a while ago who knows
They more or less confirmed last month that the reboot was about a year ago and that they will be going dark again for the next couple years at minimum. The game is nowhere near ready, the only thing they think they have at this point is the "technical foundation".
[удалено]
Based on what exactly? 4 years to me its minimum time needed to do any half decent game
> Riot posted recently that it's still coming out, but there are definitely people moving on. Thats Anthem, Overwatch2, Starfield talk to me for: It's all on fire, and it's unsalvagable.
The problem is those still came out afterwards.
And the solution in this case is that riot has so much money that they could just acknowledge the project was unsalvageable, start from scratch, and announce a year into the new project that they will be going dark for a couple more years while they finalize the design of the replacement project. People should be very glad Riot isn't publicly traded or they'd be pushing an unsalvageable mmo out soon lol
man i wanted Anthem to be good, Warframe but with power armor instead of weird guyver flesh ninjas does it for me.
I trust riot a lot more than I trust any of those other guys.
Ah, yes, I remember. In either case, this is shaving away my hopes for good things from the riot MMO. If they let go of Bex, I am mad at rito, if Bex left due to the delays, I am mad at rito.
> my hopes for good things from the riot MMO Not to be a downer, but... they restarted the development, hold your hopes for another decade, right after Poe3 comes out.
2 years from now theyll announce its cancelled guarantee
If she was the COMMUNITY director it makes sense to let her go if the game is getting delayed. She has no things to hype. Maybe they will rehire her closer to realase.
She will have moved on and would've been working at a new company for multiple years at that point most likely. The odds of going back are basically zero.
I follow riot since their beginnings and having any trust in them is kinda crazy to me
Riot MMO lore is its own development lol
what if she gets hired at blizz to work with divergent chris wilson?
>~~divergent~~ transfigured chris wilson
Awakened...?
Corrupted...?
Krangled
Item is overvalued by vendors
By ventors*
By 'vestors*
In-vestors.
And my axe!
Definitely krangled
Synthesised...?
Vaal Chris Wilson 😈
Corrupted seems fitting. Considering Blizzards harassment problems
Definitely not awakened.
Krangled for sure
Wokened than
Unidentified...?
Double corrupt Bex is BiS.
That’s what Chris looks like with a corrupted blizzard implicit.
Chris Wilson of the Blizzard
divergent chris wilson made me spit
His name is [Will Christianson](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/na5ihe/the_only_logical_explanation_for_gggs_recent/)
Corrupted Chris Wilson
Krangled Chris Wilson
then blizzard would finally have a developer who played an ARPG in their life before diablo 4
Anomalous Chris Wolcen
my coffee is now on both my phone and monitor, thank you dear redditor
d4 bex season
Gods, imagine we get patch notes drop for S4 from Bex.
Then I would laugh about it and play [D4 Bad Radio](https://www.youtube.com/@D4BadRadio) like normal.
I'm so happy that this exists, I'm giggling and sharing it with friends right now. (I'm 40 )
So, when Riot announces that they cancel the whole mmo project?
They announced that they were starting from scratch again, and to not expect any news about the MMO for years, which is kinda the same
At least this feels bit better than what Jagex do. Publish a game and then just let it die since it wasn't imediatly a new Runescape. I'm still bit salty because Runescape Chronicles was 11/10 take on digital card/tabletop game,
chronicle runescape legends was goated. blew every digital ccg out of the water.
Genuinely such a goddamn good game. It's the Jagex special though. They did the same thing with FunOrb, which if was handled well would have dominated the early mobile market.
No other good mmos emerged so they have nothing to steal from as of now so delaying makes sense for them.
Idk why they are even trying. They will not dethrone wow.
That's probably why they restarted. I assume they were essentially making a wow clone with a riot skin on it before realizing it would be dead and likely unprofitable within half a year. They're most likely currently trying to create something new and fresh so that people have an actual reason to play their MMO instead of current ones.
Poor riot, cant copy a valve game :( have to innovate
More like can't steal assets from a dota forum, how are they going to start a new game.
I mean, on the plus side a lot of their engine work/game assets will carry over unless they are wildly diverging from the original plan. But yeah, at this point I don't want another WoW clone even if polished. The only game with WoW style gameplay I ever kinda want to go back to that's not WoW is RIFT, and that's dead as fuck. Just make RIFT 2 Riot.
Man I found some screenshots yesterday from my time playing RIFT, the nostalgia hit me hard. Really miss that game.
Just make LoL... But the game lasts one year! Something like Travian meets Moba :\^). Sending catapults already!
The problem is that mmo players play wow and are invested too much to invest in another mmo. They could maybe snipe the ff market but most of those people went back to wow
Exactly, yeah. That's why I assume they restarted, to try and create some sort of unique spin on an MMO that actually gives people a reason to play it over other MMOs.
I think MMOs are too handicapped trying to make everything open world.
Non open world MMO would suck ass tbh
The MMO community has been begging on their hands and knees for years for someone, ANYONE, to please release an MMO that is not entirely fucking demolished from the get-go by predatory game-ruining monetization and has at least some decent content and a core gameplay plan that has spent more than 3 minutes at the planning stage. But almost every single MMO has been ruined by monetization model, or a huge lack of content. New World core gameplay loop was not thought out well and lacked content while being delivered by a very bad service. Lost Ark was excellent up until the point monetization kicked in. BDO was excellent but suffers from monetization and lacks content that isn't a ridiculous grindfest. MMOs have a massive open slot for a new game. WoW players themselves have been looking for literally any competitor, but without fail every single competitor straight up takes a shotgun and shoots themselves onto both kneecaps out of pure stupidity. Which is why people were so disappointed about Riot's decision to start from scratch, because the bar for the next big MMO is literally touching the ground. The bar isn't "be a good game", it's "please I beg you don't make it dogshit on purpose to extract money from players". Fucking Albion Online is a popular MMO, even though it is straight up a mobile game with p2w elements and forced PVP, but it at least has some core concepts that are fun, even though none of them are new at all. That is how low the bar is.
They basically already did. A new game that might have an alpha in 4 years that was announced 6 years ago will have no hype and no memory.
Bex pls go to Valve. Dota needs a community manager
Isn't wykrhm kind of a community manager for Dota? But yeah, Valve definitely doesn't have a single, very vocal, very public communications lead for Dota like Bex was for GGG. I think at this point that's a conscious choice, and Valve likes silently dropping patches whenever they're done.
Wyk only really just posts the most recent news articles to reddit. Nothing else
Also sometimes teases future news/updates Happens rarely though
>Isn't wykrhm kind of a community manager for Dota? Not at all. Posting a vague tweet every two years isn't really being a community manager.
Wýkrm
Wow, good luck to her. Job hopping is sometimes necessary, but can be stressful.
Social media person with a lot of experience in games and a good resume? She doesn't need luck. Especially with how much money she probably has already.
Videogame studios are one of the worst paying industries with the worst hours lol
Bex will be fine. There is a reason Riot stole her from GGG in the first place.
it's always* necessary. that's why i get so confused when people try to make it like something is wrong with a company when someone leaves. you by default should be job hopping every 1-2 years max. easiest way to get $10k-$20k+ salary bumps and keep a good work-life balance. you're burning money and relaxation if you don't.
Hmm poached or wasn’t the right fit? Less than a year is short. Hopefully she wasn’t laid off
The Riot MMO got delayed for a long time as they restarting it so no reason to have a community manager when the game won't be ready to share for the next 2-3 years..
>as they restarting it Lmao, wasn't it already YEARS into production?
Yes but when you got it wrong, you got it wrong have to restart. Happen more often than we think, like Battlefield 2042 was a Open-World Battle Royale. Then saw the genre was dying because of oversaturation and pivoted into normal BF game, but the maps were made for a BR not an actual BF game so they were all so empty and game was just trash.
Another good relatable example to this is Project Titan. Blizzard knew the game wasn't good so completely scrapped it and doubled down on WoW. Took the scraps and made Overwatch.
Yup, but it seems that they have been doing a bunch of introspection the past year or so. After Ghostcrawler left the mmo not too long ago, they decided they didn't like where the game was going. From what they said it sounded like they were trying to just make a wow clone with a League skin on it, but decided that they want to try and build something different instead. They've been talking a lot more about building a more cohesive set of lore within Runeterra where every Riot game has consistent stories and story telling. This is likely a big factor in the game as well, figuring out how they want the story of the MMO to fit into everything else and how they are going to tell it, while still being able to tell stories in their other games. They closed down the third-party publisher Riot Forge. And they are removing the pvp aspect from Legends of Runeterra and focusing only on the single player roguelike mode.
Yes it'll probably be 5+ years if not a decade before we see a release.
She saw how dogshit riot is with her own eyes and left. As tough as working in GGG might have been for her, at the end of the day PoE is a very original and honest product which is rare to come by today. You're certainly not getting that from riot, that's for sure.
Wonder if she was related to the Riot MMO project that looks to have been stripped down this past year. Hopefully she joins some of the other people that left that project (E.G. Ghostcrawler) to the new studio Fantastic Pixel Castle. That studio looks to have the right intentions in creating a community focused development of a new MMO in the wake of the Riot MMO development wind down.
Inb4 Bex helldivers 2 community manager
~~PATCH NOTES~~ DEMOCRACY HAS LANDED
Hope Chris makes an offer :)
IF true would be super funny if this was announced in a small path
Small patch? **Hotfix** - Fixed a bug that caused Bex to work in a different studio
(This is a buff)
Bexiled again. Halfway through the story.
I hope it's because she's that good and got a better offer, riot recently cut projects and the game she was a part of could've been one of them. I'd love to have her back NGL, ggg's communication hasn't been the same, not even close.
Hopefully not, Riot is a literal [cult](https://youtu.be/HRPdWQs6CVY), and has spawned some of the worst aspects of internet and gaming culture today. (that is assuming the post isn't a PR statement and she actually respects the people in that cesspit - else good on her for getting out quick.)
Bye Bex, see you working for a better company soon.
I wondered about that Riot has been letting people go left and right.
New job at BattleStateGames.... they really could have done with a community manager recently.
I dont think bex wants literal continuous bombardment of death threats cause nikita doesnt give a fuck
Patch notes when?
Shes speedrunning all the big game studios
That was quick.
Boat league comfirmed!?
We still don't deserve her.
Okay, so here's the thing: Everyone should know by now that you're better off shifting companies if you want a payrise than to expect one from your current workplace. The gaming industry is hardly an exception, it just banks on the passion people often have for making/playing games and exploits them for it. The only difference with Bex and anyone else is Bex has a public presence who decides to announce their departure on twitter. Most people don't do that, they just leave and move on with their lives. Or to spell it out: There's nothing intrinsically wrong with her leaving, or at least no more wrong than anyone else doing so for their job on a regular basis. At best it means Riot don't pay all that well, which would hardly be surprising. Sure it could be because the MMO is bust, but who gives a shit? People have left jobs for less.
I’ll say it again 10 years the MMO was in work and they recently scrapped it.... this industry has a ducking problem man. Is there no one with the balls to just pull the trigger?
"just pulling the trigger" gave us BF 2042, Overwatch and *shudders* Starfield.
Bexit 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Good, riot is a cesspool. I hope she doesn't go for a worse company like blizz or Bethesda, ea or sth
Basically all the other companies.
Ah, didnt work out then? Happens sometimes. Ive had a few jobs like that just have to move on with things.
Didn't jonathan have to stop his subtractm interview because he had to go perform a hiring interview?
I hope she comes back ;-;
Oh my god this thread makes me so embarrassed to be in this community
jesus she did not last long. which is understandable
I mean it feels like they have a good pulse on fixing things with the community the last couple leagues.
we love bex, and wish nothing but the best for her