Got “terminated” from an indie game studio internship where I was basically the entire marketing department 👍
I genuinely don’t even know whether to laugh or cry at this point.
So I was interning at a small indie game studio, (like <10 people total) that has mostly made small indie horror titles in the past, until today. They claimed to be a AA studio and brand themselves as AAA, and I joined as a marketing intern because of the genuine love and passion I have for the genre and respect for the indie community. I have been a fan since high school ❤️
First role in the industry, I was really looking forward to it and excited to learn. Not to mention, I don't know much about game dev, I genuinely joined it for the love of the game. I was even new to the marketing industry as I am fresh out of college and a recent graduate.
Except I wasn’t learning. I was the marketing department with 0 experience and little to no training at all.
I’m talking:
- Running all social media platforms (posting + replying + community engagement)
- Planning campaigns
- Building CRM + outreach pipelines
- Research + documentation + approvals on every small minute details
- Managing Discord/X interactions
- Strategy + execution BOTH
- Even some QA and random operational stuff
- Expectations to be the "cheerleader"
And then on top of that… somehow also doing HR-adjacent work??
- Onboarding presentations
- Internal branding
- Scheduling birthdays
- Designing birthday creatives
- Sending internal emails/gifts
No proper onboarding. No real guidance. No senior marketeer. Everything’s just upto you and you are responsible for even the slightest of errors that could also be other people’s oversight sometimes.💔
KPIs were never properly defined and kept changing constantly. Half the expectations weren’t even written anywhere. You were just supposed to know.
Also worth mentioning:
- Unofficially expected to be active on weekends too
- Meetings getting rescheduled last minute because their schedule is more important than mine I guess
- Work getting reassigned after I already spent time on it
And then today, at around 12 AM, I get an email saying my engagement is being terminated.
They said there was a “misalignment in what I consider acceptable performance vs what the studio expects.”
💀 Bruh like I wasn’t already doing the job of 4-5 people as an INTERN. Bffr 💔
No structure, no consistent KPIs, no real feedback system, but somehow the issue is my “understanding of performance”?
I’m not even saying I was perfect. I definitely wasn’t.
But I was trying. A LOT.
I was actively engaging with the community, building plans, putting systems in place, getting genuinely invested in the project.
And the decision just feels abrupt? Like nothing I’ve done recently even mattered.
Also just the general tone over time:
- Being told there’s “something fundamentally wrong” with me
- That I was “lucky to still be here”
- Getting called out and nagged constantly
over small
issues from the past that were blown greatly out of proportion
At some point it just stopped feeling like feedback and started feeling personal and very biased.
Honestly, the worst part isn’t even losing the internship.
It’s how much I actually cared about the project.
I got attached. I wanted to do well. I wanted to grow here.
And now I just feel like I was thrown into something way bigger than an intern role, expected to perform at that level immediately, and then blamed when it didn’t perfectly align.
Idk. Maybe this is just how early-stage startups are.
Maybe I really messed up more than I think.
But right now it just feels unfair.
Would genuinely love to know:
- Is this normal for indie studios?
- Or did I just walk into a mess?
Thanks for reading if you made it this far 🙃‼️✌️