I always take things like Glassdoor with a couple of tablespoons of salt - It's kinda like yelps or other incidental not built in to the thing its about review systems most 'normal' people don't think oh I'll go write a review if things are just fine they go and do it to vent when they are pissed off by something that has happened. So I always feel as though glassdoor reviews are dominated by pissed off ex-employees or disgruntled current employees who did not like or do not like their job and thus focus on every little niggle and blow it into something huge to justify being fired or doing a half-assed job whilst looking for something more. Meanwhile all the happy employees just get on and enjoy their jobs and their work.

 

Exactly. I'll also add that many of the positive reviews are fabricated by the people in charge of the company in order to secure more job applications. I remember at my last job, our HR Manager was telling me, "Have you seen our Glassdoor page? It's horrible! I keep having to write positive reviews to balance things out..."

One of the negative reviews was focused entirely on game updates as opposed to the themes found in other reviews (stuff to actually do with the job, compensation/benefits/management). I wonder which angry player wrote that one.

I always take things like Glassdoor with a couple of tablespoons of salt - It's kinda like yelps or other incidental not built in to the thing its about review systems most 'normal' people don't think oh I'll go write a review if things are just fine they go and do it to vent when they are pissed off by something that has happened. So I always feel as though glassdoor reviews are dominated by pissed off ex-employees or disgruntled current employees who did not like or do not like their job and thus focus on every little niggle and blow it into something huge to justify being fired or doing a half-assed job whilst looking for something more. Meanwhile all the happy employees just get on and enjoy their jobs and their work.

At the same time, the stuff is generally pretty true. Disgruntled employees don't really make things up to make a company look bad. It's just that what they say is generally biased and possibly exaggerated and they deemphasize the good parts. You shouldn't take it too seriously, but you should still recognize criticism as criticism.

 

Also you called yelp yelps.

Jagex has officially ruined my autocorrect XD

 

Also they might not THINK they are fabricating stuff, but at the same time butthurt people are pretty good at lying to themselves so sometimes it is pure fabrication even if they have convinced themselves otherwise.

At the same time, though, a review like that one fits pretty perfectly alongside a lot of the most common complaints about the state of the game.

Jagex has officially ruined my autocorrect XD

 

Also they might not THINK they are fabricating stuff, but at the same time butthurt people are pretty good at lying to themselves so sometimes it is pure fabrication even if they have convinced themselves otherwise.

 

Well, many of the negative reviews have quite a lot of good things to say in the 'pro' section, so it's not just completely "Jagex sucks, the end" sort of stuff. One can't really dismiss their criticism altogether. If you want to learn what someone's up to, or what they're doing wrong, you can't go to their best friends or people they have treated well (or happy employees). At the same time, you can't go to their enemies either. You have to, more or less, examine everything and the various perspectives. It's not enough to say so-and-so is biased and butthurt. There's no way to verify the reviews (which is a major shortcoming), but a lot of it seems to describe Jagex well and seems to corroborate with what we have seen about Jagex.

 

Well, many of the negative reviews have quite a lot of good things to say in the 'pro' section, so it's not just completely "Jagex sucks, the end" sort of stuff. One can't really dismiss their criticism altogether. If you want to learn what someone's up to, or what they're doing wrong, you can't go to their best friends or people they have treated well (or happy employees). At the same time, you can't go to their enemies either. You have to, more or less, examine everything and the various perspectives. It's not enough to say so-and-so is biased and butthurt. There's no way to verify the reviews (which is a major shortcoming), but a lot of it seems to describe Jagex well and seems to corroborate with what we have seen about Jagex.

This.

 

Yes whilst I am fully aware you must take the reviews with a pinch of salt, because as others have said people only write a review typically when something bad has happened. And yes there are also ones written by players on there, but from reading through the reviews those ones are very obvious to spot .   However, when the key problems being criticized are a common theme, that most of the reviews bring up again and again (such as management not listening to feedback until after a project is out,) and they are also something the players have found to be a problem. Then the review gains some legitimacy.

 

The reason I found it interesting enough to post originally, is that whilst on the surface things seem to have changed with the power to the players etc, it seems there are still major issues with the way the direction of the game is decided within the company.

 

This is particularly worrying therefore with vast quantities of time and money being spent on things like Transformers, there is a lot to lose, and therefore I really hope theyve one their homework and are working as a team, as opposed to being a company run based upon knee-jerk reactions to what the flavour of the moment is.

The thing about these reviews is, if they were by players. It would be targeted at Jagex in a simple minded approach. They are very detailed in how leadership is the problem. They don't blame the people. A player would mostly blame most of them. So I say most reviews are likely true, Mod Mark, Mod MMG are full of shit.