The first annual US Best Places To Work Awards ceremony just concluded with 11 overall winners. Hosted by GamesIndustry.biz, the awards recognize great employees in the video game industry and were handed out based on the responses from employees across the country.To qualify, companies had to complete a form distributed by GamesIndustry.biz that asked about "pay, holidays, benefits, social activity, and more." Responses were analyzed and then calculated towards the company's final score, but only 25% of it. The remaining three-quarters were calculated based on the responses of the employee survey, which had 60 questions about "working environment, work/life balance, management, diversity and more."When all those responses were tallied, 11 winners rose to the top as broken down by studio size. For the small companies (with staff between 10-40 people), the winners were Big Run Studios, Phoenix Labs, Pragma Platform, and Virtuos.For the medium-sized studios, the winners were FortySeven Communications, Intellivision, Parsec, Schell Games, and Survios.And for the large development studios, the two winners were Killer Instinct developer Iron Galaxy Studios and Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment.In addition to the 11 overall winners, there were a few special awards handed out in the 35-minute online presentation.
- The Diversity Award: Schell Games
- The Crisis Management Award: Big Run Studios
- The Corporate Social Responsibility Award: Iam8bit
- The Education Award: Virtuos
- The Health and Wellbeing Award: Survios
- US Best Boss Award: Haden Blackman, Hangar 13
It's not too surprising to see Respawn take home the top award for best US employers. Respawn employees seem genuinely happy whenever they appear in interviews and management seems to support their employees whenever they come forward with new ideas.
That said, Respawn is currently being challenged by hackers that are attacking Titanfall, Respawn's beloved giant robot shooter. Both Titanfall and Titanfall 2 multiplayer have been virtually unplayable for months thanks to a hacker with a bone to pick with Respawn, and it's gotten bad enough that Apex players have even hacked Respawn's Battle Royale game to beg for help on Titanfall's hacker problem.
Respawn has let players know that hacking Apex to fix Titanfall doesn't accomplish anything, but it does show how desperate these passionate Titanfall fans are getting.