Without listening to your employees, it can't work - Anonymous employee Zeptolab Employee Review

best culture keep hard working company will pay you

no cons keep hard working

The company has an incredible culture of people, which is immediately striking. It's a pleasure to work with everyone, as you're surrounded by professionals. This culture was established from the very beginning, thanks to the efforts of people who were well-acquainted with the industry. They understood how a creative studio should operate (or at least had a good idea). This momentum was set early on and is now being passed from senior employees to new hires. Any inappropriate behavior is quickly rejected. The company allocates quite high budgets for education and social needs, such as gyms and health insurance — perhaps even excessively so. Teams are flat, led by a game designer and a product manager, allowing everyone to influence the project. While all modern principles are publicly espoused, not everything is perfect in practice, but it's encouraging that an atmosphere of modernity and innovation prevails. The projects are interesting, with many experiments; you can practically do whatever you want if you can sell the idea

The company is reluctant to give bonuses, even when your team delivers a project that sustains the entire company. When bonuses are finally granted, they often require persistent requests from the PM, and when they are awarded with reluctance, it feels like a slap in the face — turning motivation into demotivation instead. There’s a company legend about a "cheese platter" bonus given to employees for releasing a project that ended up supporting the company for five years and continues to do so today. If you're working on soft launch projects or prototypes, forget about bonuses for at least five years. Stakeholders struggle to focus and often set unrealistic goals; they prematurely shut down projects and prioritize monetization before games become truly interesting. This results in valuable resources being wasted. Stakeholders interfere with projects and prevent project managers from doing their jobs; at some point, they even claimed they would step back, but in reality, all decisions still go through this bottleneck — which prevents people from reaching their full potential. Those responsible lack real authority or even the ability to hire additional staff if needed. As a result, opportunities are lost, and games often fail to realize their potential. The company does not value expertise. Despite spending large sums on employee development, employees often cannot apply their skills effectively afterward. This leads to talented individuals being poached by other companies or leaving voluntarily; some fall victim to layoffs. Ironically, those who shout the loudest and align with corporate politics tend to be promoted. Valuable employees become stagnant — they don't get opportunities to utilize their skills or create new hits based on their expertise. Instead, the company chases after current trends in gaming — right now, idle games are in vogue. Game jams tend to be dull; winning entries often lack innovative gameplay and are simply clones of modern trends or visually appealing art pieces