Kindly Beast Reviews

Cons

The company closed before it had a chance to really make an impact

Cons

The 3 owners fired everybody due to their incompetence.

Cons

-Lack of direction to developers. -Executives were scummy

Cons

- Constant state of limbo where no information or direction is given for lengthy periods of time in reference to progressing the game development. The owners are unable to let go of production responsibilities resulting in huge delays. Why hire lead roles, directors etc if their decisions are going to be overruled at the end? If you want to direct the team, then perhaps its better to elect someone else to run the company in the meantime. - Consistent lies. Several all staff meetings covered how the company was going to move forward, and how things would be operated differently. Several days later, and none of what was promised would come into fruition. Something as simple as "We'll be in the office everyday, working on the floor with the team" was proven to be too out of reach for them. - Owners were unable to take feedback or imbue change. We had a leadership structure full of incredibly successful and knowledgeable individuals who had the entire studio's best interests in mind. They were fired. Upon the loss of these amazing individuals, we saw their policies dismantled.

Cons

- Direction to staff on work and even the games being worked on was minimal at best, invisible at worst. - Management positions were renderred null, leaving a surplus of staff awaiting direction from the Board. - The Board was the only point of contact for any and all creative and business decisions, with 50+ employees awaiting instruction and feedback at all times. - Work was discarded at the discretion of the Board and sometimes openly insulted by the CEO. - Employees were actively encouraged to seek lower quality ways of finishing their work, and attempts to innovate were seen as a problem. - Some advice given to the Board by experienced staff members was not only ignored but sometimes ridiculed. - Industry best practices were discouraged, and attempts to use tools to organize workflow as per standards were discarded. - Company policies were nebulous and unfinished, and sometimes even changed. - Long periods of inactivity and no contact from the Board were common. Any work being done during these times was almost guaranteed to be unused.

Cons

The owners, Mike Mood and theMeatly, quickly grew their studio from only a few to 60+ and handled communication extremely poorly, resulting in around 80% of the employees being terminated without cause after only 8 months. Their actions implied to me that the company was running out of money, but no justification was ever given. The first signs came when Showdown Bandit was taken away from a team of 20+ developers, 2 weeks before launch, and completed by Mood and theMeatly alone. Just before returning, they fired all the VP's (the previous owners of Karman Interactive, the studio they bought) without cause. This introduced immense stress, causing some to go on medical leave. Upon their return after finally shipping Showdown Bandit 3 weeks late, the owners introduced their new mandate; "get it done, good enough", explaining that we would not be innovating or building games in an efficient or stable way any more; as long as the game appears to work for the player, ship it. This was another indicator of money trouble, but we tried to work with them regardless. We were barely given a chance, and a mere 3 weeks later the mass layoffs happened, again without cause.

Cons

CEO outright rejecting work and ridiculing it. Fired almost the entire staff. No work most of the time. Always awaiting demands from the Board.

Cons

Kindly Beast CEO Mike Mood does not have any respect for employees. He rarely showed up to the office and didn't bother learning names or faces. Yet over the course of ONE month: - 4 very competent VPs were fired out of nowhere. Then Mood threatened to fire those that needed time to process the event. -After personally announcing to the rest of the company that our jobs were safe, a mass firing took place just a few days later around Thanksgiving -There was no apology, no explanation, no accountability, and no show. The firing was discovered by some when personal accounts became locked followed by a publicly posted note to abide by our "contractual obligations". -Apply to this place at your own risk, and don't believe anything Mike Mood says. They are dishonest and will use and dispose of all, if not most, of their employees without remorse or regret

Cons

Starting near the end of the summer 2019 everything started to go downhill. The original founders started to become paranoid and egotistical. Thinking every piece of work that was previously done was not worth keeping. All the while continually changing directions on 1 of the projects. The board didn't know how to run a large team and fully expected everyone to know everything at any given moment. When there are teams of 15+ that won't always happen. After the tide turned everyone was worried about their jobs and had to walk on egg shells. The CEO often aggressively threatened people in private meetings, phone calls or over Slack. This caused many people large amounts of anxiety and it quickly turned from a fun place to work to one that people dreaded coming into on a daily basis. The CEO also often made rash decisions which would negatively impact the entire development team.

Cons

Being told everyone's job is safe multiple times only to have nearly the entire company terminated a couple weeks later. Decisions from owners seem to be rash and ill thought out. Hiring incredibly talented people and not allowing them to do their job. Throwing out massive amounts of work for reasons that were not fully transparent. Owners not showing up to work for weeks at a time or communicating with us leaving us to guess at what's going on.