4 ms·

Is it still commonplace for them to get a percentage of sales as a bonus? I know someone who worked on Tomb Raider 2, 3 and 4. he's not poor.

indy 10y ago
I don't think that's ever been commonplace. The games industry is known for long hours and relatively low wages
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vvanders 10y ago
Royalty payments work somewhat like the music industry where your publisher "advances" you the ~40M+ gamedev budget + 40M+ marketing budget. Once the game has made more than ~80M is when you start to see royalties. Don't go into game development looking for a good wage, industry usually pays 60-70% what you see for equivalent SE jobs.
louthy 10y ago
It was commonplace when I was in the games industry (1996-2006). I never saw a penny, that is also commonplace.
- vvanders 10y ago
  I once got a $25 Starbucks giftcard for pulling an almost 48-hour epic coding session to fix some major issues right before a large trade show(we were blowing the 64 open file handle limit, so I completely rewrote our audio system to stream from the texture cache instead of individual files). That's all the bonus/royalty/atta-boy I ever saw in my times in games. The 90/10 rule is in full effect in that industry where the top 10% make 90% of the profits.
gambiting 10y ago
I work in a large games studio and any developer that's been here for 15-20 years is getting royalties from titles released ages ago. But I don't know of any current project where royalties are/will be paid. Maybe some people have contracts like that but I haven't heard of that actually happening.
Reedx 10y ago
Royalties were fairly common in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. My own experience was from a game dev owned by Sierra/Vivendi and we not only received royalties for our games, but were given bonuses for games (namely Diablo and Half Life) under the larger umbrella. But as someone else mentioned it's not a straight % based on sales - they only kicked in at a certain point. And most games never hit that threshold. These days royalties are pretty rare I think. But it's common to get stock and/or profit sharing in the form of annual bonuses based on how the company as a whole did. That's how EA works, for example.
Blaaguuu 10y ago
I work at a medium-sized game studio, and we have a profit sharing system, but my understanding is that it is rare in the industry. We are essentially self-publishing, so that helps.
Graham24 10y ago
I did not know that had all changed, we reckon he must have got £250,000+

indy 10y ago

I don't think that's ever been commonplace. The games industry is known for long hours and relatively low wages

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vvanders 10y ago

Royalty payments work somewhat like the music industry where your publisher "advances" you the ~40M+ gamedev budget + 40M+ marketing budget. Once the game has made more than ~80M is when you start to see royalties. Don't go into game development looking for a good wage, industry usually pays 60-70% what you see for equivalent SE jobs.

louthy 10y ago

It was commonplace when I was in the games industry (1996-2006). I never saw a penny, that is also commonplace.

vvanders 10y ago
I once got a $25 Starbucks giftcard for pulling an almost 48-hour epic coding session to fix some major issues right before a large trade show(we were blowing the 64 open file handle limit, so I completely rewrote our audio system to stream from the texture cache instead of individual files). That's all the bonus/royalty/atta-boy I ever saw in my times in games. The 90/10 rule is in full effect in that industry where the top 10% make 90% of the profits.

gambiting 10y ago

I work in a large games studio and any developer that's been here for 15-20 years is getting royalties from titles released ages ago. But I don't know of any current project where royalties are/will be paid. Maybe some people have contracts like that but I haven't heard of that actually happening.

Reedx 10y ago

Royalties were fairly common in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. My own experience was from a game dev owned by Sierra/Vivendi and we not only received royalties for our games, but were given bonuses for games (namely Diablo and Half Life) under the larger umbrella. But as someone else mentioned it's not a straight % based on sales - they only kicked in at a certain point. And most games never hit that threshold. These days royalties are pretty rare I think. But it's common to get stock and/or profit sharing in the form of annual bonuses based on how the company as a whole did. That's how EA works, for example.

Blaaguuu 10y ago

I work at a medium-sized game studio, and we have a profit sharing system, but my understanding is that it is rare in the industry. We are essentially self-publishing, so that helps.

Graham24 10y ago

I did not know that had all changed, we reckon he must have got £250,000+