Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 566 posts

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#251

Post by xtracto »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #19

Spoiler: Without reading it, it's shit. People go into it thinking they're in love with video games and get chewed out of the machine after a few years.

I second this sentiment. I did my BSc Soft. Eng. between 1999 and 2004. At the time I wanted so bad to get into game development. Being myself from a third world country there was no clear path to that. More or less at the same time, the infamous "EA Spouses" scandal broke, and after giving a good look at the industry I decided against it.

17 years later, I don't regret my decision at all. I'm at the top of my career, earning a USD salary, (around $150k USD) living in my third world country with great benefits and developing exciting things (fintech, crypto, etc). I still sometimes doodle around with Unity some weekends, for entertainment purposes

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#252

Post by BeetleB »

hn8788 wrote: post #235
BeetleB wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just to have a bit of a counter argument from me You didn't supply any kind of argument. Your comment can be reduced to "If you want a good salary, you are not one of us." As a person who loved gaming and wanted to work in that industry, you are the reason I didn't go for it.

You should take some personal responsibility and stop blaming your life choices on other people. There's also a world of difference between saying that a FAANG salary isn't the most important part of a job for some people, and saying people in game dev shouldn't have a good salary.

> You should take some personal responsibility and stop blaming your life choices on other people.

You should stop jumping to conclusions. Nothing I said indicated I don't take responsibility for that decision. I can choose not to take a job because of crappy pay, but I can still point out why the job has crappy pay (and the reason is not me).

> There's also a world of difference between saying that a FAANG salary isn't the most important part of a job for some people, and saying people in game dev shouldn't have a good salary.

I don't get paid anywhere near FAANG salary, but I bet I get paid more per hour than most game devs.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#253

Post by inopinatus »

dwaltrip wrote: post #214
inopinatus wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t get suckered by this argument, folks. It’s the start of an abusive relationship. Whatever your sector, you should expect to be paid for your time and your skill. No-one pulled this shit at my FAANG or global ISP gigs, despite the fact I love working on high scale infrastructure. There is no special magical wonderland industry that intrinsically bathes its staff in so much joy that you can lowball their pay and…

It seems like you can’t even imagine that someone might not be interested or willing to work at FAANG? If those aren’t an option, then it might not be a lowball offer anymore. FAANG compensation is in an entirely separate category, from what I can tell.

The point is about not allowing yourself to be exploited, just because it’s what you love, and in any context. I earned as much in enterprise and consulting as I did in FAANG and ISP; there is sector median disparity, but to paint the differences as somehow magically intrinsic and inevitable would be as false for FAANG as it is for game dev and any other industry besides.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#254

Post by Retric »

xtqctz wrote: post #226
StreamBright wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the locations FAANGs are operate also tend to be the most expensive parts of US.

This is fact which feels related, but doesn't have much to do with labor market wage equilibrium.

High cost of living areas push people away when the local job market slumps. So, the equilibrium does end up relating to high housing costs just indirectly.

Aka, if they paid less the local population drops which would reduce supply.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#255

Post by ska »

bigbob2 wrote: post #237
sailingparrot wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> minimum wage at Wendy's is also a supply and demand issue, but that job isn't sold as "do it for the love of the fast food industry" That's a fallacy, no one goes to work at Wendy for the love of it. Some people do really want to work in video game for the love of it, they know that their salary will be lower, and they still do it.

The whole thing is apples to oranges because Wendy's is a specific business whereas the game industry is an entire industry. Many people enjoy working in restaurants, maybe just not so many at Wendy's. I'm sure many people who work at abusive companies such as EA love the industry they're in, but maybe not as many love working at EA. Probably explains the high turnover rate.

> game industry is an entire industry.

And it's crazy to hold up the restaurant industry as some kind of model of reasonable work hours and fair compensation.

If anything, game developer war stories pale in comparison with fine dining kitchens.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#256

Post by jayd16 »

socialist_coder wrote: post #150

Just to have a bit of a counter argument from me, a game developer who loves games and has worked in the US games industry for the majority of my 20 years career: If your argument is "You can make more at a FAANG company" - well yeah, you can. You don't work in gaming because you want to make the top salary. You work in gaming because you love games and you enjoy having all your coworkers also love games and being ab…

>Also the argument that it's "grueling 80+ hour weeks day in and day out is" is bullshit!

This is just your experience. There are plenty good studios but plenty of grueling ones!

If you're working on a AAA title, crunch can be all year long.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#258

Post by bedhead »

julienb_sea wrote: post #179

This is ultimately a supply and demand issue. Google pays high salaries because they have to in order to hire the talent they want. Game devs apparently do not have to, because they are able to fill their roles for lower salaries. Don't pretend like all tech companies wouldn't love to lower dev salaries, they just can't because they wouldn't be able to hire. Game companies apparently have a meaningful differentiator,…

This is fairly normal for certain "glamour" industries. Back in the day when it was relevant, MTV was infamous for paying people almost nothing, for no other reason than they could because MTV had a coolness factor associated with it that people sought. Same is generally true for a lot of the entertainment industry.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#259

Post by BeetleB »

bityard wrote: post #230
paxys wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda that only serves to keep labor costs low. The entities on top are large multi-billion dollar corporations who are running a business, just like any other industry. And this has been more and more apparent in recent years seeing just how anti-consumer the video games industry is getting. If a Google recruiter told me "take a low salary and wo…

> The whole "do it for the love of the craft not money" is bullshit propaganda A bunch of people already responded to this, but I'm going to add my two cents anyway: I currently make 6 low figures in a relatively boring but non-stressful systems administration job. The company is a dinosaur in Internet Years and has its idiosyncrasies but is ultimately a very decent place to work. My manager gives me my priorities an…

> I currently make 6 low figures in a relatively boring but non-stressful systems administration job.

For context, I was contacted by a game dev company recently. The max they could pay me was 5 figures.

Doing a gaming job for 40 hours a week for low 6 figures is fine. However, it's not the reality for many, if not most, game devs.

Re: Game developers sharing their salaries on Twitter

#260

Post by ironmagma »

xenihn wrote: post #245
ironmagma wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what’s the recommended way of talking about how much you make when you are at a startup which only has stock options, where the stocks may eventually be worth hundreds of thousands but are currently worth 0?

go ahead and count them if you work at robinhood or stripe you could also just lie if it's that important to you

Well the question was more around what to count them as since there’s a wide range. In my experience people typically just mention salary and count stock options as 0 but everyone in this thread seems to disagree.
Post reply on HN