To be honest, KSP's a hell of a resume entry. It's like asking someone why they might join the Peace Corps.
No. That viewpoint is utterly toxic to anyone who wants to work as a game dev. The Peace Corps is not making a ton of money off your back.
I'm not a game programmer. As an outside observer, the whole game dev industry seems pretty toxic. That may be a wild misconception. My first inkling came from the whole EA widows thing. I don't actually go looking for opinions, so the few opinions i see come from these kinds of explosions. From my old stale point of view, it seems like companies exploit passion until the devs can't hack it anymore.
Should i update my opinion? Has game dev gotten better?
Aye, copy pasting a comment I posted below: I live in Mexico, I've never seen anyone in Mexico make minimum wage, ever. And I do know people from all walks of life. As to what they earn, again, I live in Mexico, I am employed by a Mexican company, and work for Mexican clients. I make their yearly salary in 15 days or so. It really is disgusting that they would treat employees this way, specially when they were such a…
I am probably one of those comments below "justifying it in terms of the minimum wage". Quite honestly, a big part is that I read it as $2,400 USD a month originally (not yearly!). Even if that had been the case, I wouldn't have faulted developers for feeling underpaid in the particular case of KSP (given how big of a success the game ended up being). As yearly salary it is indeed atrocious. Still, worth saying, not…
> Still, worth saying, not an illegal salary.
"This is so shitty that the nicest thing that can be said is it's not actually illegal" doesn't merit the exculpatory nature of this sentence. And the sentiment behind it isn't really worth much in the first place.
No. That viewpoint is utterly toxic to anyone who wants to work as a game dev. The Peace Corps is not making a ton of money off your back.
I'm not a game programmer. As an outside observer, the whole game dev industry seems pretty toxic. That may be a wild misconception. My first inkling came from the whole EA widows thing. I don't actually go looking for opinions, so the few opinions i see come from these kinds of explosions. From my old stale point of view, it seems like companies exploit passion until the devs can't hack it anymore. Should i update m…
Parts of it have. Other parts are still very happily engaged in a race to the bottom that shows no signs of stopping. (Under no circumstances would I ever recommend working in mobile, for example, unless it's King or another hit machine.)
$2400 a year? What US dev works for that in this market? You are better off at burger king.
A homeless beggar can clear $2400 a year easy; that's less than $7 a day. You're essentially working for free at that point. I don't understand why they ever agreed to it, at least not without some sort of profit-sharing thing.
Aye, copy pasting a comment I posted below: I live in Mexico, I've never seen anyone in Mexico make minimum wage, ever. And I do know people from all walks of life. As to what they earn, again, I live in Mexico, I am employed by a Mexican company, and work for Mexican clients. I make their yearly salary in 15 days or so. It really is disgusting that they would treat employees this way, specially when they were such a…
I am probably one of those comments below "justifying it in terms of the minimum wage". Quite honestly, a big part is that I read it as $2,400 USD a month originally (not yearly!). Even if that had been the case, I wouldn't have faulted developers for feeling underpaid in the particular case of KSP (given how big of a success the game ended up being). As yearly salary it is indeed atrocious. Still, worth saying, not…
Iirc people ran with that figure...but it was actually given by just one of the employees, who was a 16 year old they got to do "community support".
Farther into the article: > To be fair to Squad, the Mexican minimum wage is about $100 USD monthly, so they weren't technically paying anyone lower than the minimum wage...
The minimum wage in Mexico is only used as a unit to pay fines, no one earns that, you simply can't live with that kind of money. Even $200 per month is low for a engineer. A Junior Engineer's salary is around $500-$1k per month.
~13% of the fraction of the country that is formally employed earns minimum wage[1]... just not usually people in any sort of specialized profession working in cities.
At the risk of repeating a comment I made further down in a thread, the average QA Engineer salary in Mexico is literally 10X more than one of these devs was making. Anyone trying to justify this in terms of the Mexican minimum wage is trying to sell you ocean front property in Arizona.
Aye, copy pasting a comment I posted below: I live in Mexico, I've never seen anyone in Mexico make minimum wage, ever. And I do know people from all walks of life. As to what they earn, again, I live in Mexico, I am employed by a Mexican company, and work for Mexican clients. I make their yearly salary in 15 days or so. It really is disgusting that they would treat employees this way, specially when they were such a…
I'm probably missing some back story here. Why did the developers agree to work for such low salaries? If they accepted the job knowing how much they will be paid, why are they upset about it now?
I am probably one of those comments below "justifying it in terms of the minimum wage". Quite honestly, a big part is that I read it as $2,400 USD a month originally (not yearly!). Even if that had been the case, I wouldn't have faulted developers for feeling underpaid in the particular case of KSP (given how big of a success the game ended up being). As yearly salary it is indeed atrocious. Still, worth saying, not…
> Still, worth saying, not an illegal salary. "This is so shitty that the nicest thing that can be said is it's not actually illegal " doesn't merit the exculpatory nature of this sentence. And the sentiment behind it isn't really worth much in the first place.
The article states that the minimum wage in Mexico is $100/month ($1,200/year). My guess is he moved to Mexico to work on this and gain experience. Pay sucks but the game is successful and if he didn't publicly come out against the company it would have likely led to higher paying jobs in the states due to association. This may not be popular to many people but I'm sure it's well known on on Hacker News by now. Long…
Excuse me? For all intents and purposes $2400 a year is less than I spend on parking every year. This is not a "startup" salary, this is less than 1/10th the salary of your typical QA engineer IN MEXICO . I see a lot of posts in this thread that seem to be trying to whitewash the work hours and the pay as somehow reasonable. They're not, not even for the notoriously-bad-to-work-for game industry.
There's a difference between whitewashing and seeing the bright side. Having been on the dev team of this popular game is useful. Presumably even the $2,400/yr was useful, though obviously only as useful as $2,400/yr is. I'm not saying it's fair, I'm saying "it happened, and what now?"
It's Success 101. When you go through something that sucks, by all means enumerate what sucked about it so you can watch out for those things in the future. But the next thing a successful type of person does is take inventory of what positive and useful things they got out of it, or can make out of it. And then go do it. Cry if you want, have yourself a little outrage parade for your Facebook friends, but it's a waste of time. Maybe fester over it for 20 years and get an ulcer, that'll show 'em! Meanwhile if I interview that person I will stay far away, and hire the guy who found the bright side.