SRL Archive - RuneScape News and General

I was searching some companies on www.glassdoor.com (salary + company site) related to my major, and was curious if Jagex was even listed on it.

Surprisingly it was, and the reviews were bad.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Jagex-Reviews-E322592.htm

Also, reddit had an overview and discussion of these bad reviews
http://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/13y9ap/a_review_of_jagex_by_employees_an_interesting/?already_submitted=true

Here's just one of them

“Great people lead by senior managers they can't bring themselves to trust”
Current Employee in Cambridge, East of England, England (United Kingdom) – Reviewed last week

Pros – The people are great, all interesting, capable and all care about the finished product. Lots of them participate in extra-curricular activities and actively seek fresh blood and offer advice to interested parties.

Nice benefits : gym membership, pension arrangements, healthcare, subsidized canteen, good office building,

You're working for a company that makes games!

Despite all the cons below I do believe there are far worse places to work. Colleagues are very supportive when other teams are under unpleasant pressure and go out of their way to help when they can.

Cons – Unpaid overtime is expected, this is apparently industry standard but not exactly nice.Recently (last few weeks) shifted to mandatory overtime for several teams. This makes the unpaid aspect to the overtime downright unpleasant.

Limited promotion prospects; management and exec roles are mostly external hires.

History of unsuccessful attempts to branch out from the core game, each repeating some trends that could have been addressed, e.g. shifting direction frequently on key mechanics and ignoring early warning signs, such as testers and developers on the project admitting "This game isn't fun" and multiple changes in creative leads for the same product.

Communication between teams is often lacking, resulting in unnecessary, premature or wasted work.
Middle Management get panicky near milestones, resulting in sudden micromanagement and slightly raised tempers, but often appear disinterested (late for meetings discussing the project, slow to respond to questions) in the intervening periods.

No granularity on importance of decisions, every request is "critical" and "top priority" which has to be done "ASAP". Decisions may be later overruled subject to another manager or executive's whim.

Advice to Senior Management – Review projects regularly, especially before putting significant investment into them, and be prepared to cut projects that don't look worth it any more.

Pick some individuals you trust to have a complete and detailed vision for a given product. Back their decisions and make sure they have as much visibility as possible of what is going on in their given product.

The image you give to your workers is important, they currently seem to think you haven't a clue. Better-informed workers are better able to trust you, know what parts of their work are important and make decisions when unexpected problems arise which fulfil the spirit of the instructions they've been given .

e.g. shifting direction frequently on key mechanics and ignoring early warning signs, such as testers and developers on the project admitting "This game isn't fun"

This explains so much.

Interesting read. Thanks for posting

Im assuming most of the review are from employees in the Player Support section of the company.

Here's one more, advice to senior management.

Incompetent senior management. Maybe I should highlight and underline that? In fact I can't think of one senior manager who could actually manage people with any skill.

Communication. Awful.

Attitude to customers. Unbelievably bad. I give you FunOrb, War of Legends, RuneScape etc etc

Broken promises. Consistent and regular

Regularly choosing the exact and polar opposites of what normal, sane, intelligent people would do.

Making knee jerk decisions. Constantly.

Bringing in industry experienced professionals who would last approximately 6 months before they understood what a mad house Jagex is, and leaving the good guys to clear up the mess.

Setting ridiculous targets. I mean ridiculous.

Wanting everything done tomorrow. No planning. Putting unbelievable pressure to deliver on pointless projects.

The current drive to rid the company of people who've been there since the start but who might not have a tick in a particular box. For redundancies read compromise agreements.
Advice to Senior Management – It's too late for that. How the current team is still in charge is a miracle

This was a good read, thanks for posting :)

Not a problem at all.

Also, some more information on the Runescape section for Reddit.
Yes, there is actually a /r/runescape in reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/13y9ap/a_review_of_jagex_by_employees_an_interesting/?already_submitted=true

Well Jagex surely needs to change their Management.

Thanks for posting this!

But really, they are a little unorthodox on their approach but you can't say they're bad when they make a LOT of money on a monthly basis.

If their customer support and management tactics are so bad, how can this be explained ?

Its because of the people that are on the higher level, for example the senior management executives.

Like one review stated, they keep getting smacked with deadlines that can be as soon as the following day, when it deals with so much content.

Lets focus on that. If they are getting stressed with deadlines which are too soon, the you could assume that the quality of the update/content is amateur. And I think its safe to say that the updates from the past 6 months to a year have been following just as the review was explaining about the issue of deadlines.

For the topic of how much money they make, its back to the people of the top of the team. They can either decide to re invest into the game, keep some of it for bonuses for themselves or other high ranks, and then theres the investment firm to deal with.

They got their selves stuck in a web. There is a problem that leads onto more problems.

Great read. Found it really interesting, especially the reddit comments. Its good to get some insight to the company and some explanations for why it sometimes feels like they don't have a clear plan or idea about user desires.

Indeed this was a good read, thank you Jakee. It sheds some light in dark corners that Jagex probably doesn't want to be seen.

From: Jakee
Its because of the people that are on the higher level, for example the senior management executives.

Like one review stated, they keep getting smacked with deadlines that can be as soon as the following day, when it deals with so much content.

Lets focus on that. If they are getting stressed with deadlines which are too soon, the you could assume that the quality of the update/content is amateur. And I think its safe to say that the updates from the past 6 months to a year have been following just as the review was explaining about the issue of deadlines.

For the topic of how much money they make, its back to the people of the top of the team. They can either decide to re invest into the game, keep some of it for bonuses for themselves or other high ranks, and then theres the investment firm to deal with.

They got their selves stuck in a web. There is a problem that leads onto more problems.

That indeed makes sense. It's like those multinational companies, they generate a lot of cash, but what they own as debt is astronomous.

If it was my call, I would prefer to have a smaller company with less revenue but with every retail service counted on, all clear and happy employees than a billion-dollar company which by the end of the month they sell 1 billion products and still can't cover the costs because it is clear that Jagex puts those deadlines on their manager for 2 reasons:

- They fear they need to put content fast or people will get bored and leave

- They want more work done, i.e [EXAMPLE] They want to release a skill in 80 days of development. They could do it in 200 days, it would have better quality but since paying 80 days of work or paying 200 days of work, the outcome is the same: release of the skill( with more or less quality, they don't care anyway), they prefer to pay only 80 days of work per said skill.

I don't know if that made sense to you guys, It's quite confusing, my bad. Can't explain better :redface:

Also, they mention they were put in mandatory overtime
I've never heard of mandatory overtime. But after looking it up, it looks like UK has some broad terms on this over time thing from employers.
https://www.gov.uk/overtime-your-rights/compulsory-overtime
You can't usually be forced to work over 48 hours a week in the UK, since thats the law over there. So I'm assuming their productivity inputs and outputs are pretty terrible.



Now lets bring up another problem here, communication.
The reviews posted there clearly state that there is a problem between communication. Communication with the head high ranks between those lower. And then the communication between the player base and the whole company its self.
If there's problems with communication with the staff, there will always be a problem with the updates. These teaser images and behind the scene videos and competitions were rarely done before until the investment firm came in and took several seats in their board of executives.

There's always more than what meets the eye. I think I was stating the obvious in this post, but yeah :P

That explains why the EoC and equipment were glitched or not up to par and all these hidden updates which seem to spring out of no where.

I'd never use reddit as a source for any information except memes.
And the glassdoor ratings might not even be by actual people from the company.

Meh.

From: ___
I'd never use reddit as a source for any information except memes.
And the glassdoor ratings might not even be by actual people from the company.

Meh.

Jmods use the runescape sub-reddit to answer questions/post in discussions, and do live AMA's and Q and A's and so forth. Players respond in them.

Im not sure how the ratings work, but most if not all of them were from current employees or ex employees.

Since we're unable to fully verify the identity of an anonymous user, we require each user to certify their employee relationship to the company when they post any content. We also require all users to validate their email address before their posts are made available to the community. This verification process allows us to put measures in place to identify suspicious users and/or posts. And all of these, combined with active community moderation and our commitment to review every post, allow us to have confidence in our information.

Very interesting. Runescape needs the Gower brothers back. As a matter of fact, im going to play Classic right now. Ha

As much as people call it a circlejerk, i miss the 2006 iteration of RS.

Thanks for posting :)

I doubt the gower bros would want to come back to this mess.

From: Jakee
I doubt the gower bros would want to come back to this mess.

i second this. seems like Jagex is in a hot mess!

Humm..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ytJibZtxsA&feature=g-u

Maybe this person could be lurking on SRL

From: [J]ustin
Humm..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ytJibZtxsA&feature=g-u

Maybe this person could be lurking on SRL

Saw this website posted on like 4 different forums days and days ago..

From: DeiJaiVui
Saw this website posted on like 4 different forums days and days ago..

Sorry for that lol, but I actually did look this up for curiosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ytJibZtxsA
[YOUTUBE]9ytJibZtxsA[/YOUTUBE]

Interesting video

Yes this is interesting

I'm gonna sell my accounts and all my gold.. I don't think RS will be around for that long to be honest.

From: Dervish
I'm gonna sell my accounts and all my gold.. I don't think RS will be around for that long to be honest.

You will be surprised people need jobs and Jagex suplies them even if they are crappy

Sounds like Jagex really need to invest in some better management, you can see the potential in so many of the updates, it's just managed so poorly (big example: EoC)

http://villavu.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1138147

Still I think it was good to bring this up again. Better management = a game that will last longer

http://villavu.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93298

Merged threads, thanks Nebula and Jakee :)

This is my first time seeing two threads getting merged :P
No problem! :)

From: Jakee
This is my first time seeing two threads getting merged :P
No problem! :)

Me too :spongebob: