Bad place for coders. Big opportunity cost. - Software Engineer ArenaNet Employee Review

2.0
May 1, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Art team is good and you get to work on interesting concept stuff Design team is decent, you get to work on fairly interesting stuff as well

Cons

Arenanet is risk averse and tries to avoid any technical challenges. This means you will learn nothing important here as a coder. Especially because Mike O'Brien is very hands on with the coding department. They also don't care about your growth as a professional. Not only do they not care about your growth, but they also don't pay much. Basically they try to be a low tech risk-averse company in terms of software engineering. MMO industry as a whole is a subniche of a niche that is gaming. MMOs are addictive and exploit players, sinking enormous amounts of their time without any human message, grinding the levels. While GW is not the worst of MMOs in this respect, it's still a massive time sink of a game and NCsoft parent company is quite comfortable exploiting players with basically borderline porn (Blade and Soul). Generally speaking working in the game industry as a coder is a poor choice of skillset for investment of your time. You only live once and every year counts towards the skillset that you build. Working at arena will not improve your skillset in my opinion.

Explore other reviews about ArenaNet

5.0
Sep 22, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Let me be the first to write a review since there hasn't been any recently. I've been with the studio for a few years and have worked at many others in the video game industry. High-level, this studio is the one to work for. They have a great team, the leadership is great, and the studio is pretty secure from existing products that are still doing well. * Great work-life balance * Zero crunch mentality * Encourage mental health days * Management is very transparent * Management is open to feedback * Bonuses are actually a thing here * Raises are also a thing here * Very SOP driven to support you * Constant reviews of policies to ensure success

Cons

It's hard to find a con here. I would say the only thing is a little too much freedom for team members. They give you a few inches, some people may take a mile. But, that's on you to manage and ensure you are successful. As with most studios, it may often be hard to advance in certain teams, but on the other hand, they do pay well, do raises, bonuses, and ensure you are happy too. Other than that, been in the industry for 10+ years, have seen some really poorly managed studios and been through over 15 layoffs. This is not that studio. Layoffs have happened here, but they make sense, and management is dead set on reducing loss.

2
4.0
May 2, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Sense of community, diversity, co-workers.

Cons

Micro-management, toxic environment within certain departments, difficult to advance.

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