GREE International is a company that is milking the last of it's cash cows. The company has done fairly well in the last 3-4 years in large part due to its $210M acquisition of Funzio. Funzio created a portfolio of addictive and profitable games that have been the majority of revenue but that is now beginning to decline rapidly as these games are really starting to show their age. User retention is falling and new user acquisition has been an uphill struggle for the last couple of years.
The people who made these successful games are also all nearly gone. The 4 founders of Funzio left nearly a year ago and there has been a steady exodus of Funzio employees as their options have vested. Product pipeline is soft at best and there have been numerous delays for upcoming games. Several unreleased games were simply re-skins that crashed and burned during beta and never saw the light of day.
Product portfolio isn't great but company culture, especially at the top, is even worse. A recent reorganization has brought in a megalomaniac leader (search Kabam's review "What happened to this place?") who attempts to inspire but instead micromanages and drives fear throughout the organization. Decisions are made and changed with little to no warning with subordinates taking the fall while leadership blames and points fingers, despite the fact that subordinates did exactly what was asked. The other VPs are not much better. What many of them do on a day-to-day basis is a mystery to most people and most rank and file employees look at them with disdain.
Promotions are given to those who pander to the execs the most, not to those who do the best work. This results in managers who often have an over-inflated sense of self worth and are completely clueless about the division/product they now run. The best skill you can have to succeed in this company is not product management, analytical reasoning, or design but rather how well you can navigate a treacherous corporate culture.
Due to the lack of new games and the dependence on antiquated ones, the company is now at a point where revenue is monitored on a day-by-day basis and any sort of deviation below target is dealt with a scathing postmortem meeting and usually solved with an aggressive sale shortly thereafter. This is the start of a vicious downward cycle as revenue typically plummets post-sale which is then made up by another (you guessed it) sale. Players aren't stupid and end up buying only during sale periods which creates an incredibly spiky revenue profile and increasingly difficult to hit monthly targets. Because of the monthly pressures to meet revenue targets, product development is stifled as there is no breathing room to try new and innovative features; only optimize existing ones.
Many people who are still working there are looking for a way out and the ones who are not are either new hires or content to ride the gravy train to the bitter end.
As most people know, gaming is very much a hits driven industry. If the next couple of games do not knock it out of the park, it would not be surprising to see GREE have a mass layoff like DeNA (it's neighbor across the courtyard) within the next 9-12 months.
Advice to Management
Replace yourselves with a team of professionals who have morale integrity, deep game domain experience, and who genuinely care about employees.
Allowing fiefdoms to form, playing favorites, not taking responsibility for your actions, and the willingness to throw subordinates under the bus for any reason have created a toxic environment where most employees do not trust or respect you.
Despite all the negatives, there are still people who work at GREE that believe in making a great game. Get out of their way and let them do it.
Originally Posted by CJ54
