Gameloft: Joining the Game

Gameloft is a video game company based in Paris, and has been developing and publishing games since 1999. Since the release of smart phones, Gameloft has successfully released 190 games worldwide. They gained international recognition when Despicable Me: Minion Rush was released in 2003—reaching over 100 million downloads.

The company currently has 19 studios in America, Europe and Asia; and is home to 4,600 employees—composed of 2,500 game developers. In Canada, they have studios in Toronto and Montreal. Their office in Toronto is at 72 Fraser Avenue, Suite 200.

The company offers a wide variety of opportunities in different fields, including work in Art, Audio, and Video production, in Business Performance, in Marketing, in Production and Project Management, etc.

Due to the stereotype that game development industries have a casual work environment, I already got the hunch that Gameloft might be the company-type that offers recreational activities for their employees. True enough, their website does show that they have table-top games (football) and pool tables at their offices.

Reviews on Ca.Indeed.com and GlassDoor.ca supported my hunch when former employees shared that they have entertainment rooms (with game consoles), flexible work hours (with mandatory core hours—which is understandable), Beer/Happy Hour Fridays, and social clubs that organize monthly, fun activities. One review even mentioned. “if you’re allergic to dogs, this isn’t the place for you,” – which is great, because on this day and age, who doesn’t like dogs?

The website also highlights that Gameloft offers well-being facilities, fun indoor and outdoor activity, workshops and team building activities, international job opportunities and relocation packages.

Aside from the free fresh fruits, coffee, tea, the company apparently also offers “awesome teams” you can work with, according to their former 3D Artist.

More than 100 reviews also describe the work environment as good and positive. The teams that the former employees worked with apparently give the ‘freedom to ask and try new things.’

Gameloft seems to be a great stepping-stone for people who are just getting into the industry. One review supported this buy saying it was “a good place to start and learn from real-life, rich behavioral data.” Another said that it had challenging jobs, if you were lucky enough to be in a good project. Also, it is an international company. These comments can make any employee think that Gameloft could definitely polish a newbie.

But despite Gameloft being a good section on one’s fresh portfolio and resume, reviews like ‘almost impossible to make a career’ and ‘zero incentive to go above and beyond’ can make any employee or future employees ask, “…but how long will I stay here?” In fact, the lowest rating the received was for Job Security & Advancement on Indeed.

Another poorly rated category for Gameloft was of Management. On the website’s Management page alone, you could see they have multiple Vice Presidents (VP) heading different fields and different offices; however, some fields have VPs that other regions did not, and vice-versa. The lack of mentioning who’s in charge of Human Resource can also make you wonder: who’s the big shot managing the 4,600 employees?

Also take into thought that 12% of their reviews on GlassDoor.ca (101 out of 808) were about how poor their management team is. One highlighted comment even harshly said, “The talent is all in the game studios not in the HQ”. Another unfortunate comment also said, “managers were all from other industries, and some managers did not even know anything about the game.”

Of course, these are all assumptions partially made because of anonymous users of review platforms. Also, I am not well informed of the organizational structure of Gameloft, and I am not an expert in the field of this industry. So, I cannot factually conclude anything, and I personally think each office has their own story anyway. Every company has its pros and cons— Gameloft is just another company in the pool.

Nevertheless, gaming companies are great environments for people in the Interactive Media Industry. One of their User Experience (UX) Designer even said, “I build the practices and strategies for how our games will be presented and interact with players. I believe life is too short – that’s why I decided to work on successful games that will change players’ lives.” How amazing would it be to design something that can get 100 million downloads around the globe?