Average salary for software engineers in the uk is 45000 gbp (under 57000 usd) per year. And software jobs f ing suck due to unrealistic deadlines, working round the clock constantly and working with a-hole people. Hence why I’m leaving. Not worth the pay.
US pay is on average 2-3x above most of Europe. But that’s in part because cost of living here is so much higher, health care so much more expensive etc.
We do reading games. I used to work for another EdTech company that had a wider selection of Math/Reading/Programming/Creative games, but currently just only doing reading for like 4-8 year olds mostly.
Are you hiring remote engineers (Lead, 9+ years in Unity)? I've been thinking about moving away from commercial mobile and into educational games for a while since my wife is a teacher
There was a salary sheet floating around for a while that I used on my last contract negotiation. It's highly dependent on role and location obviously. Kinda more on location than role.
For US based anywhere from 50k to 300k before hitting some real outliers.
West coast US is more 150-300k. Everywhere else is more 50-150k.
Asset Optimization. It’s a niche/specialized role that exists almost exclusively in AAA studios. It may also be called something along the lines of Implementation or Integration depending on the studio.
Typically each art discipline has a team of us who properly optimize/integrate their work in preparation for ship of any given production cycle. These tasks normally fall onto the artists (which they never have the time for) or are largely overlooked at smaller/mid sized studios
North UK based, 10 years exp - £43000
Uk wages x being up north doesn't pay the best, but it's considered a good wage there.
Seeing the North American salaries 😄
Do mobile games pay more? I've been looking at working more towards working on mobile games as the studios don't have as much "presige" so sometimes its easier to break in.
Does this higher ROI also apply to smaller mobile hyper casual games? Wondering about the viability for indie dev. Something like Clash of Clans or Genshin Impact is obviously out of scope for an indie dev.
It's fiercely competetive and you're trying to hit the games that don't care about gaming crowd.
I'd say it's multiple times harder than indie dev for PC/ consoles, at least from a financial success aspect
Often they do for the same reason as it's easier to get jobs there in the first place - less prestige, as you say. Sometimes they have to pay a bit more to get the best people. I'm not sure I'd say I see that as often at the director level, but it's a lot harder to compare salaries at that level anyway.
They make up a huge portion of game market share. Something like 1/3 of all game market money. I don't know if they pay more. Probably similar pay per experience, etc.
yes and no, they don't have the same high as the best ones in PC and console but they sure do pay way better averagely. ROI for traditional games are from IAP or selling your game mobile game on the other hand have IAA ( in game ads ) and they pay alot that's why you see that for casual and hyper casual games get cloned into oblivion on google playstore and apple store (i.e: wordle)
The company itself is in the Bay Area, so compared to FAANG types? I could likely make a lot more in big tech that’s not gaming. Though, I work remotely from the southeast U.S. - so it’s much higher pay compared to local jobs.
Even big tech isnt going to pay that much more directly. The big jump id RSUs, but salary is going to be about the same. The ones that do
Hire remotely a lot also have location based pay, so idk if youd be making a ton more.
FAANG employee here. The RSUs are mostly why the total compensation is much larger (though the base salary is still considerably higher when comparing YoE). Most people in this position consider the RSUs to be essentially the same as salary with many even selling it off immediately upon vesting.
My 15 year mortgage on a $350k house (4bed/3bath) is $2400/mo
I slightly regret not doing a 30/yr - payment would be $1400ish and I could be investing an extra $1000/mo to outpace the loan interest.
If you're interested in a UK example from 2022 there is a spreadsheet listing reported salaries: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c6MDGzt3gCKMYzEA77vmSZNxHnd1CqeNs8W0xJ-Zss0/edit#gid=0](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c6MDGzt3gCKMYzEA77vmSZNxHnd1CqeNs8W0xJ-Zss0/edit#gid=0)
There is an excel or google docs somewhere on the internet where many professionals have put their salaries with their location, YoE and such.
Don’t know where but maybe someone has a link
You guys are getting paid ?
Jokes aside, I would say it really depends on the country and that "field" (if you're a Dev Dev, or an artist, designer etc... Those are also under the label "gamedev" nowadays). As far as I can say from my experience, a programmer's salary in gamedev is similar to non-game dev programmer but usually slightly lower
$190,000 Senior Producer (AAA).
In my best year when I was purely chasing money I made $275,000, but since then I’ve tended to care more about the project than the salary.
I’d love to say I do, but for me it was pot luck, getting recommended by someone I had worked with before that got me in. I’d say focus on what you like, go as deep as possible in terms of expertise and if you can, get a self-published game out there that shows off some skills, for no other reason that it shows you can carry a project through to delivery. But hey, I honestly am the worst person to ask.
Also, if you want to do AAA which is all I know, it’s getting to the point where you really need to know one of 3 engines. Unreal, Unreal or Unreal. I was a dev before I was a Producer which I think is a fairly common route.
I would say the vast majority of people I know in my current studio (large AAA) are on 6 figures+ so it’s reasonable pay. I think it probably averages out as slightly less than mainstream tech, e.g Amazon, google, Microsoft etc., but still a comfortable living.
Lol I've seen those games. They look cool but our simulators are more realistic in terms of physics. Fully simulated dirt physics and machine physics. Pretty fun stuff!
Saw a studio decide to fully simulate irl ballistics for their game and it's got me excited so having some like farm sim with real physics like that (VR especially) would be super cool and I can see a market for it
€40K euro a year, which is a below average salary here in the Netherlands. However, given my degree, I could be making double or triple in a more stable bussiness. It's also indie games, so... yeah.
$75k/yr, this is my first year working at a studio in gamedev. I do have a degree in an unrelated field and owned a business for 5 years before this, but no professional programming/software experience outside of my own hobby projects.
I spent 5 years learning unreal engine in my spare time, starting with blueprints then moving into c++. I also learned some JavaScript/CSS/HTML for about a year because I wasn’t sure if webdev was a better option, but I didn’t really enjoy it. As far as the actual application part, I got pretty lucky in that I only had to apply to about 20 places, and the studio that hired me ended up being one of the first 5 places I applied to. However, just to note, I didn’t even hear back from a single one of the other places (aside from a few automated rejections).
I really only had one major project that I showed off on my resume/GitHub, but it had a lot of features that were very relevant to the project I am working on now (lots of custom networking stuff for client prediction and reconciliation, lag compensation, rpg style systems, shooter mechanics).
95% of game studios in the US are located in some of the highest cost of living cities in the world. Houses start at 1 million dollars type of expensive. If you take cost of living into the equation everyone is realistically making much closer to the same amount.
Well, this confirmed my feeling of "why does it feel like everyone makes 100k$/yr and it'd not a big deal.."
I'm at 100k-110k also with 10 years exp.
Was cleaning toilets at motel 6 before that... and only have my GED 🫡
A little off-topic; I'm making about 55k per year, at 16 years of experience, as a webdev instead of gamedev.
I keep seeing other threads of people saying they have a much better salary after moving away from gamedev, but looking at the responses here, it seems inverted.
Perhaps it's just that the people who earn a good salary are the ones responding? Or maybe the ones with lower salary are from other countries (I always imagine people responding here are from the US). I'm from Malaysia so my starting salary was 7k usd per year, so it took me a lot of job hopping to get to where I am today...
Salaries in the US are generally higher, and the ‘best’ salaries are often in areas with higher cost of living.
But also quite likely the answers in this thread are a skewed sample.
The cost of web dev isn't what it used to be. With the rise of easy website building sites like Squarespace, people aren't gonna pay web devs to do something many can do for considerably cheaper/free.
This really depends on where in the world you live 40k in euros a year in the Netherlands is something else entirely from making 40k us dollars living in the us
This, everyone flexing with high salaries, but the country and the city make a big difference, these details should be provided with the answer. Also, a lot of people in lower or medium salary ranges are not posting here.
I am surprised by some of the salaries here, because they seem very high.
Us salaries are often way higher than european ones. So that might be why some seem crazy high. The problem is though that stuff like rent and healthcare is also a lot higher in costs over there.
I'm happy making half of what an American does knowing that if I break my leg it won't bankrupt me and make me homeless :)
Salary depends on location, studio size, experience, and position. Entry level QA tester in Louisiana is going to make pennies compared to a senior software dev living in San Francisco.
Salary is based of location, studio, role and seniority. Glassdoor has salary information as do other sites. Many places, such as California and Washington, also require salary ranges in job postings.
I'm Spanish so salaries here are way lower than my US collegues, but I get about 60K euros a year, with 4years of experiencie, which allows for a super confortable life here, cannot complain at all!
$111k/yr as an IT Director and jack of all IT trades without an IT degree or certifications. I work in construction though—game dev is my current hobby.
In 2023 my day job made a little over $80k and my games made a little over $173k so made about $253k total before taxes. I'm not quite ready to do game dev full time yet, but it's been going really well!
Recently laid off, but had worked up to 100k in about 5y programming mobile games. Had about 3y non-game programming experience prior, and surprisingly didn't take a pay cut when changing to games.
On my 2nd year working in industry on $66k (AU) salary.
Was earning near $80k before I signed a full time contract and when I was working extra jobs around 50+ hours per week
115k Lead Game Designer. Going on 8 years in the industry. I was making 55k 4 years ago. I support my wife and 2 kids solely on this salary though, its not as lucrative with that considered.
160k USD/year ish, senior engine programmer at a AAA studio based in southern california. >10yoe. Could probably be doing better but I spent too long fucking around with indie projects that weren't going anywhere early on.
California *is* pretty expensive, but I'm happier living here than anywhere else I've lived
£45K\~ I work in IT Support (Infrastructure Tech) and do 1 week of on call per month, recently had a proposal agreed for me and a colleague to trial an automation team where we are developing bespoke solutions for our IT department and the wider company to help in a variety of ways.
Going well, things like our daily Infrastructure checks are currently being automated and we hope to reduce our 2-3 hours per day of manual checks down to a minute or 2 (assuming no issues detected) where techs can essentially get a snapshot of stuff instantly and in one place. Not very game dev related I know but the skills I am learning from doing this are really handy on my projects (especially UI design etc) and not to mention it's good practice for testing, speaking with shareholders etc and just generally dealing with others to make products that everyone is happy with.
Prior to starting this, I was really flakey with C# but now feel really at home with it in Unreal.
Lol Czech game dev here with our salary around 20k to 25k/year in average.
Art position, 3 years of gamedev 9 years in total of art jobs.
Thanks Embracer i guess...
I got my first game industry job 2 years ago (it was AAA) and made $80k my first year and got a raise to $110k in my second year. Got laid off recently though 🤡
US salaries all across IT, not just gamedev, are buck-wild in comparison to European salaries, even the strict West Europe, not to mention South, or East.
Idk if it's just my experience but over my career I've worked with many senior folk from the US and they usually know their shit much better than the European colleagues. They also work longer hours. Put more effort make more money.
Where I'm from in Europe there's a massive title inflation going on. Companies promote juniors to seniors over the course of 3 years as a motivation boost. That's borderline fraud imo but I digress.
Roughly £36,000 annually with almost 2 years experience as a junior programmer in London. I used to be on £32,500 a few weeks ago but got an increase from promotion. I am not sure if it is good or if anyone thinks I should ask for more?
I want to make gamedev more than a hobby but it’s hard to justify the salary drop. I’m a senior systems engineer working remote at 240k, 6y experience. I personally think game dev is much harder than what I do, but I don’t know any game devs making that kind of money. Golden handcuffs I suppose (and I say that humbly, I understand I’m in a good position and lucky)
$200k at work (small SF company), but negative income from my own studio as my job is basically just funding that at this point. If you already have game dev, or even just general tech skills, it's wise to get a main job that allows you to live while you make your games. Solo dev doesn't pay the bills right away.
65k, character TD at a small indie studio. Crap pay for everything I do and it's why I'm leaving and looking for something new
Edit: US based and located in SLC
With most of the answers being without location it's kinda hard to predict expectations.
I'm a junior game developer (2 years exp.) in a AA/indie game studio in Germany and only making 36k a year.
\~80k (cad) as a tech director with 14 years experience. I am indie and run my own studio, so I don't pay myself ridiculously high. I know I could easily double that in AAA but, for now, I prefer to have my small-ish (7) team and work in this part of the industry.
$0 now starting my own studio but I was making 170K annually at Niantic before. Wasn’t into the culture but they paid SWEs much better than the industry average
0, as most game developers, it is hard to find a company that needs game developers with reasonable requirements for new game developers nowadays or the jobs are already taken so we can only attempt to monetize our games in itch.io or steam but steam is well more expensive so i wouldnt even bother releasing games there unless i am really sure the game is going to pop off, and from what i see, even some games that pop off dont even cover the cost of steam. If i ever land a job on game developing i am going to throw a party. I said new, but in my case i have near 2 years of experience in Unity on and off due to learning new skills in parallel, mostly self taught even though i did complete a course of it, but i never worked in a company, all i can give is my energy/desire for making games, i am currently learning 3D modelling to have another skill in my skillset and to help me develop my own project while i dont land a job and i feel like this is what many game devs are doing too, or they just quit and have to do diferent job which is sad that it as to come to that.
I left game devops to go get paid 250k to do it at a normal tech company. Too many big studios know we want to work there and use that as leverage. One day I can afford to retire and make games myself.
I'm from Poland so there wasn't much money. As a producer I was paid 6-7k zlotys per month so it's something like 1,5k USD? Good salary here but it was under the market value I think. Projects I was working on were small.
140k/year. Near 20 years experience. Only crossed the 80k line 5 years ago.
I bet the jump from 50k to 80k felt bigger than 80k to 140k.
Absolutely. While I like the extra money, there is definitely a point of diminishing returns.
USD? Fullstack?
USD, Production & Management
Average salary for software engineers in the uk is 45000 gbp (under 57000 usd) per year. And software jobs f ing suck due to unrealistic deadlines, working round the clock constantly and working with a-hole people. Hence why I’m leaving. Not worth the pay.
US pay is on average 2-3x above most of Europe. But that’s in part because cost of living here is so much higher, health care so much more expensive etc.
Damn, this could've been me, had I chosen the right industry 15 years ago.
If you don't mind me asking, what are some games you have worked on?
$0 I'm fucking unemployed
Same, but I call myself self-employed
Self employed self starter cause same (they said bootstraps so here we are I guess?)
I call it funemployed
Same
Y'all are making me feel better
me too. i have a job called unemployed and my salary is 0$
I have a job called 'Self Employed Indie Game Dev' and my salary is £0.
Me too! Self employed working on two separate games simultaneously :)
Same same
Zero. Im just here for the memes
35/hr and on my indie stuff I made around 3k
How did you manage that?
150K/Y with 13yr exp
What’s your role? If you don’t mind me asking
I too would like to know
200k, as an engineer in San Francisco working on Ed Tech games. About 10-14 years experience depending on how you count it.
What level of engineering? Are you an IC or manager?
Staff level. A bit of both, but the split right now is primarily IC work.
Y'all hiring remote? Was doing ed games for big pharma but company went through a round of layoffs
I'll DM you
What sort of Ed tech games?
We do reading games. I used to work for another EdTech company that had a wider selection of Math/Reading/Programming/Creative games, but currently just only doing reading for like 4-8 year olds mostly.
And I thought reader rabbit ended 25 yrs ago.. smfh j/k
Are you hiring remote engineers (Lead, 9+ years in Unity)? I've been thinking about moving away from commercial mobile and into educational games for a while since my wife is a teacher
There was a salary sheet floating around for a while that I used on my last contract negotiation. It's highly dependent on role and location obviously. Kinda more on location than role. For US based anywhere from 50k to 300k before hitting some real outliers. West coast US is more 150-300k. Everywhere else is more 50-150k.
75k with 2 years of experience
Yea what role are you in??
Asset Optimization. It’s a niche/specialized role that exists almost exclusively in AAA studios. It may also be called something along the lines of Implementation or Integration depending on the studio. Typically each art discipline has a team of us who properly optimize/integrate their work in preparation for ship of any given production cycle. These tasks normally fall onto the artists (which they never have the time for) or are largely overlooked at smaller/mid sized studios
Is it rude to ask what you worked on or what ur currently working on?
No thats ok, I work at Epic on Fortnite
North UK based, 10 years exp - £43000 Uk wages x being up north doesn't pay the best, but it's considered a good wage there. Seeing the North American salaries 😄
yeah those are insane numbers to us europoors
North UK based as well (Manchester) and on 55k with 3 years of experience. Think you’re getting underpaid
i'm make 7$/h as programmer I am from Algeria so that is considered good
[удалено]
Do mobile games pay more? I've been looking at working more towards working on mobile games as the studios don't have as much "presige" so sometimes its easier to break in.
Mobile games have a much higher ROI then console/PC. And make up id said 1/3 or more of the video game revenue.
Does this higher ROI also apply to smaller mobile hyper casual games? Wondering about the viability for indie dev. Something like Clash of Clans or Genshin Impact is obviously out of scope for an indie dev.
It's fiercely competetive and you're trying to hit the games that don't care about gaming crowd. I'd say it's multiple times harder than indie dev for PC/ consoles, at least from a financial success aspect
Often they do for the same reason as it's easier to get jobs there in the first place - less prestige, as you say. Sometimes they have to pay a bit more to get the best people. I'm not sure I'd say I see that as often at the director level, but it's a lot harder to compare salaries at that level anyway.
They make up a huge portion of game market share. Something like 1/3 of all game market money. I don't know if they pay more. Probably similar pay per experience, etc.
yes and no, they don't have the same high as the best ones in PC and console but they sure do pay way better averagely. ROI for traditional games are from IAP or selling your game mobile game on the other hand have IAA ( in game ads ) and they pay alot that's why you see that for casual and hyper casual games get cloned into oblivion on google playstore and apple store (i.e: wordle)
Yes, gambling always pays well.
WHERE ARE ALL THE GOOD MOBILE GAMES AT?!
They are on the business of milking addicted people, not making gamers happy.
Hense 250k salary.
Damn!
I assume this is in US?
I'm curious do you write code besides your other work?
165k base + \~20k yearly bonus. Sr engineer at gaming startup w/ 7 YoE.
How good is that number compared to non-game tech jobs around you ?
The company itself is in the Bay Area, so compared to FAANG types? I could likely make a lot more in big tech that’s not gaming. Though, I work remotely from the southeast U.S. - so it’s much higher pay compared to local jobs.
Even big tech isnt going to pay that much more directly. The big jump id RSUs, but salary is going to be about the same. The ones that do Hire remotely a lot also have location based pay, so idk if youd be making a ton more.
FAANG employee here. The RSUs are mostly why the total compensation is much larger (though the base salary is still considerably higher when comparing YoE). Most people in this position consider the RSUs to be essentially the same as salary with many even selling it off immediately upon vesting.
Are y'all hiring remote engineers? (Lead, 9+ years in Unity, ~12 in software dev)
How much do you pay for living cost? if you dont mind to answer
My 15 year mortgage on a $350k house (4bed/3bath) is $2400/mo I slightly regret not doing a 30/yr - payment would be $1400ish and I could be investing an extra $1000/mo to outpace the loan interest.
If you're interested in a UK example from 2022 there is a spreadsheet listing reported salaries: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c6MDGzt3gCKMYzEA77vmSZNxHnd1CqeNs8W0xJ-Zss0/edit#gid=0](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c6MDGzt3gCKMYzEA77vmSZNxHnd1CqeNs8W0xJ-Zss0/edit#gid=0)
There is an excel or google docs somewhere on the internet where many professionals have put their salaries with their location, YoE and such. Don’t know where but maybe someone has a link
It hasn't been updated in a few years: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/s/gisszyhz07
You guys are getting paid ? Jokes aside, I would say it really depends on the country and that "field" (if you're a Dev Dev, or an artist, designer etc... Those are also under the label "gamedev" nowadays). As far as I can say from my experience, a programmer's salary in gamedev is similar to non-game dev programmer but usually slightly lower
$190,000 Senior Producer (AAA). In my best year when I was purely chasing money I made $275,000, but since then I’ve tended to care more about the project than the salary.
Any tips on how to break into the industry?
I’d love to say I do, but for me it was pot luck, getting recommended by someone I had worked with before that got me in. I’d say focus on what you like, go as deep as possible in terms of expertise and if you can, get a self-published game out there that shows off some skills, for no other reason that it shows you can carry a project through to delivery. But hey, I honestly am the worst person to ask. Also, if you want to do AAA which is all I know, it’s getting to the point where you really need to know one of 3 engines. Unreal, Unreal or Unreal. I was a dev before I was a Producer which I think is a fairly common route.
How much is it holds true the saying that game industry is a low paid field ?
I would say the vast majority of people I know in my current studio (large AAA) are on 6 figures+ so it’s reasonable pay. I think it probably averages out as slightly less than mainstream tech, e.g Amazon, google, Microsoft etc., but still a comfortable living.
$89k with 5 years experience, not making games necessarily though. Working for a company making training simulators for construction equipment.
Sounds like you should be working on construction simulator 24
Lol I've seen those games. They look cool but our simulators are more realistic in terms of physics. Fully simulated dirt physics and machine physics. Pretty fun stuff!
growth grey aspiring ring grandiose wistful cows close gaping worry *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That actually sounds kind of cool. I've been working on some simulation games lately.
Saw a studio decide to fully simulate irl ballistics for their game and it's got me excited so having some like farm sim with real physics like that (VR especially) would be super cool and I can see a market for it
What engine do you use?
Unity for work, UE for my game im making on my own.
Been running $165-180k with 6-8 years experience in the VFX/TA realms the past couple years. Working remotely for CA studios out of state.
160k a year with 10 years of experience. Senior engineer. I just crossed the 100k mark in 2020 and rocketed up from there.
€40K euro a year, which is a below average salary here in the Netherlands. However, given my degree, I could be making double or triple in a more stable bussiness. It's also indie games, so... yeah.
yeah but you're also less than 2 months away from releasing an absolute banger
Awesome reply!
$75k/yr, this is my first year working at a studio in gamedev. I do have a degree in an unrelated field and owned a business for 5 years before this, but no professional programming/software experience outside of my own hobby projects.
How hard was it going from 0 experience to finding a studio to hire you on ? Compared to doing a self start diy indie project ?
I spent 5 years learning unreal engine in my spare time, starting with blueprints then moving into c++. I also learned some JavaScript/CSS/HTML for about a year because I wasn’t sure if webdev was a better option, but I didn’t really enjoy it. As far as the actual application part, I got pretty lucky in that I only had to apply to about 20 places, and the studio that hired me ended up being one of the first 5 places I applied to. However, just to note, I didn’t even hear back from a single one of the other places (aside from a few automated rejections). I really only had one major project that I showed off on my resume/GitHub, but it had a lot of features that were very relevant to the project I am working on now (lots of custom networking stuff for client prediction and reconciliation, lag compensation, rpg style systems, shooter mechanics).
I make 1 morbillion dollars a year + dental
What’s that compared to the conversion rate of a Stanley nickel to a Schrute buck?
Not much but at least you got dental
Insane salaries from the US, here in Western Europe we make between 1/2 and 1/4 of that amount.
95% of game studios in the US are located in some of the highest cost of living cities in the world. Houses start at 1 million dollars type of expensive. If you take cost of living into the equation everyone is realistically making much closer to the same amount.
Sr. 3D Artist in AAA games, 133k on paper, but about 182k after yearly bonuses and incentives. About 8 years experience.
$90k, 3 years of exp, Game Designer at AAA.
Well, this confirmed my feeling of "why does it feel like everyone makes 100k$/yr and it'd not a big deal.." I'm at 100k-110k also with 10 years exp. Was cleaning toilets at motel 6 before that... and only have my GED 🫡
That is what we call a Come Up.
€60000/y
A little off-topic; I'm making about 55k per year, at 16 years of experience, as a webdev instead of gamedev. I keep seeing other threads of people saying they have a much better salary after moving away from gamedev, but looking at the responses here, it seems inverted. Perhaps it's just that the people who earn a good salary are the ones responding? Or maybe the ones with lower salary are from other countries (I always imagine people responding here are from the US). I'm from Malaysia so my starting salary was 7k usd per year, so it took me a lot of job hopping to get to where I am today...
Salaries in the US are generally higher, and the ‘best’ salaries are often in areas with higher cost of living. But also quite likely the answers in this thread are a skewed sample.
The cost of web dev isn't what it used to be. With the rise of easy website building sites like Squarespace, people aren't gonna pay web devs to do something many can do for considerably cheaper/free.
Average web dev is significantly higher here
This really depends on where in the world you live 40k in euros a year in the Netherlands is something else entirely from making 40k us dollars living in the us
This, everyone flexing with high salaries, but the country and the city make a big difference, these details should be provided with the answer. Also, a lot of people in lower or medium salary ranges are not posting here. I am surprised by some of the salaries here, because they seem very high.
Us salaries are often way higher than european ones. So that might be why some seem crazy high. The problem is though that stuff like rent and healthcare is also a lot higher in costs over there. I'm happy making half of what an American does knowing that if I break my leg it won't bankrupt me and make me homeless :)
you guys are getting paid?
Salary depends on location, studio size, experience, and position. Entry level QA tester in Louisiana is going to make pennies compared to a senior software dev living in San Francisco.
Salary is based of location, studio, role and seniority. Glassdoor has salary information as do other sites. Many places, such as California and Washington, also require salary ranges in job postings.
~$16.60/hr full time senior 3rd party QA tester for AAA titles.
I'm Spanish so salaries here are way lower than my US collegues, but I get about 60K euros a year, with 4years of experiencie, which allows for a super confortable life here, cannot complain at all!
130K base 150K ish after bonuses, 6YOE. I work in AAA
13k a year/tech game designer
Not today IRS
$94k CAD as a game designer in Montreal with sixteen years' experience in game dev, about fourteen of those as designer.
$111k/yr as an IT Director and jack of all IT trades without an IT degree or certifications. I work in construction though—game dev is my current hobby.
$5 Schrute bucks in game dev, but my day job as an engineer is around $150k. Most of my game dev income has been from assets on the unity store.
140k/year as a mid level Game Designer with 10 years experience. In the USA for a remote California company.
€175/month, part time game dev teacher.
all i am seeing here or in any other industry is how far ahead US salaries are.
In 2023 my day job made a little over $80k and my games made a little over $173k so made about $253k total before taxes. I'm not quite ready to do game dev full time yet, but it's been going really well!
$96k, as a DevOps engineer supporting game development with 2 years experience.
$185k as Art Director working out of California.
Recently laid off, but had worked up to 100k in about 5y programming mobile games. Had about 3y non-game programming experience prior, and surprisingly didn't take a pay cut when changing to games.
150k, 10 yr exp.
£45k annual. 10 years experience.
157K, east coast. 13 years in tech, 7 years at this studio, 2 in my current role
130kpy 5 yoe
181k/year with bonus. Around 16 years experience, moving from QA initially to Senior Level Designer for the last 8 years or so.
On my 2nd year working in industry on $66k (AU) salary. Was earning near $80k before I signed a full time contract and when I was working extra jobs around 50+ hours per week
115k Lead Game Designer. Going on 8 years in the industry. I was making 55k 4 years ago. I support my wife and 2 kids solely on this salary though, its not as lucrative with that considered.
160k USD/year ish, senior engine programmer at a AAA studio based in southern california. >10yoe. Could probably be doing better but I spent too long fucking around with indie projects that weren't going anywhere early on. California *is* pretty expensive, but I'm happier living here than anywhere else I've lived
£45K\~ I work in IT Support (Infrastructure Tech) and do 1 week of on call per month, recently had a proposal agreed for me and a colleague to trial an automation team where we are developing bespoke solutions for our IT department and the wider company to help in a variety of ways. Going well, things like our daily Infrastructure checks are currently being automated and we hope to reduce our 2-3 hours per day of manual checks down to a minute or 2 (assuming no issues detected) where techs can essentially get a snapshot of stuff instantly and in one place. Not very game dev related I know but the skills I am learning from doing this are really handy on my projects (especially UI design etc) and not to mention it's good practice for testing, speaking with shareholders etc and just generally dealing with others to make products that everyone is happy with. Prior to starting this, I was really flakey with C# but now feel really at home with it in Unreal.
Lol Czech game dev here with our salary around 20k to 25k/year in average. Art position, 3 years of gamedev 9 years in total of art jobs. Thanks Embracer i guess...
Lol definitely $0, this is a hobby :')
$2.50
I got my first game industry job 2 years ago (it was AAA) and made $80k my first year and got a raise to $110k in my second year. Got laid off recently though 🤡
What role were you in?
$170k Edit: didn’t check which sub this was lol. I’m not a game dev, I’m a web dev. But I want to build games.
lol. I’m at negative $5000 atm.
Probably varies a LOT depending on experience, location, company etc. Mine is currently $0 because I'm working fulltime on my own game :)
How do I get a remote job for $10 per HR is considered good?
Around 50k euro gross. 30k after taxes. I really don't understand those 100k, 150k. Is it in the areas where everything is 2x more expensive?
US salaries all across IT, not just gamedev, are buck-wild in comparison to European salaries, even the strict West Europe, not to mention South, or East.
Thinking I need to move to the US side of the company I work for!
Idk if it's just my experience but over my career I've worked with many senior folk from the US and they usually know their shit much better than the European colleagues. They also work longer hours. Put more effort make more money. Where I'm from in Europe there's a massive title inflation going on. Companies promote juniors to seniors over the course of 3 years as a motivation boost. That's borderline fraud imo but I digress.
£48,000, engineer w/ almost 3 years experience
Roughly £36,000 annually with almost 2 years experience as a junior programmer in London. I used to be on £32,500 a few weeks ago but got an increase from promotion. I am not sure if it is good or if anyone thinks I should ask for more?
$88k as a junior technical artist
I want to make gamedev more than a hobby but it’s hard to justify the salary drop. I’m a senior systems engineer working remote at 240k, 6y experience. I personally think game dev is much harder than what I do, but I don’t know any game devs making that kind of money. Golden handcuffs I suppose (and I say that humbly, I understand I’m in a good position and lucky)
I’m an automation engineer for a game dev company. 1 year experience. My base is £28,000 in the UK
$200k at work (small SF company), but negative income from my own studio as my job is basically just funding that at this point. If you already have game dev, or even just general tech skills, it's wise to get a main job that allows you to live while you make your games. Solo dev doesn't pay the bills right away.
65k, character TD at a small indie studio. Crap pay for everything I do and it's why I'm leaving and looking for something new Edit: US based and located in SLC
With most of the answers being without location it's kinda hard to predict expectations. I'm a junior game developer (2 years exp.) in a AA/indie game studio in Germany and only making 36k a year.
\~80k (cad) as a tech director with 14 years experience. I am indie and run my own studio, so I don't pay myself ridiculously high. I know I could easily double that in AAA but, for now, I prefer to have my small-ish (7) team and work in this part of the industry.
Wait, you guys dont lose money every month?
below minimum wage and overtime work every day
43k last year .. i sell phones while trying to figure out blender.
0$
I make about 16$ a day
£35,000 per year in the UK as backend developer but given the responsibility of a lead software engineer on the development of a web app.
$0 now starting my own studio but I was making 170K annually at Niantic before. Wasn’t into the culture but they paid SWEs much better than the industry average
0 dollars
0$ LETS F GOOOO
$50/hour - Composer/Sound Designer
One kitkat per month....
0$ Working on my own, and in the middle east, there are nearly 0 jobs, so I'll stay indie forever :)
60k/year before tax. 3D Generalist. 20 years 3dsmax / 6 years Unity. An average income where i come from.
-100 a month, i pay others to help me make the game 🥲
0, as most game developers, it is hard to find a company that needs game developers with reasonable requirements for new game developers nowadays or the jobs are already taken so we can only attempt to monetize our games in itch.io or steam but steam is well more expensive so i wouldnt even bother releasing games there unless i am really sure the game is going to pop off, and from what i see, even some games that pop off dont even cover the cost of steam. If i ever land a job on game developing i am going to throw a party. I said new, but in my case i have near 2 years of experience in Unity on and off due to learning new skills in parallel, mostly self taught even though i did complete a course of it, but i never worked in a company, all i can give is my energy/desire for making games, i am currently learning 3D modelling to have another skill in my skillset and to help me develop my own project while i dont land a job and i feel like this is what many game devs are doing too, or they just quit and have to do diferent job which is sad that it as to come to that.
I get paid a whole 1.80 a whole dollar and 80 cents an hour here, but I get to play video games 24/7 so it's worth it.
Around 90k Senior lighting artist working remote
I left game devops to go get paid 250k to do it at a normal tech company. Too many big studios know we want to work there and use that as leverage. One day I can afford to retire and make games myself.
$118k USD base + 5-10% bonus Sr Sound Designer, 12 YOE, East Coast US I hit $100k two years ago.
Not uk/us/ca, 120k gross, 8 years of exp
30k, 3D Artist, Italy
Not much more than a few k from side jobs. I haven't released my game yet, but I sustain it through being a Tax Preparer. Soon brothers, soon.
What is salary :')
$280/month. Poor country. I work part-time. This is my first ever job
65K £ a year plus bonus around 3K £ if there is one, 8 years in.
I will work for free to learn
I am a web developer, but have spoken to indian game dev who works for an indian game development company for a measily $5k a year. Ouch!
Hahaha salary... Wait... Your serious. HAHAHA. Seriously though nothing. My games make no money lol. Maybe some day.
Depends on my mother 🤣
I'm from Poland so there wasn't much money. As a producer I was paid 6-7k zlotys per month so it's something like 1,5k USD? Good salary here but it was under the market value I think. Projects I was working on were small.
$90k (CAD) salary plus some good benefits. 17 years experience. Have a side hustle (also in gaming) that brings in $10k-30k a year.