8 ms·
>“$2,400 was my yearly salary working a full time eight hours a day, 40 hours a week job.” Why would you ever choose to work there in the first place?
by btym 10y ago
>“$2,400 was my yearly salary working a full time eight hours a day, 40 hours a week job.”
Why would you ever choose to work there in the first place?
- vkou 10y agoBecause you're 21, and want to make video games, and live with your parents?
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoFor coders thinking they'll just build something cool? This is your competition.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Mikushi 10y agoMore reasons to evolve your career away from coding, it's a dead end by 35, you'll just be outcompeted on so many fronts.
- emodendroket 10y agoAnd do what instead? Where is that not an issue?
- zapu 10y agoProbably, yes. I'm guilty of taking jobs like these in the past as well.
- usrusr 10y agoSounds reasonable. We might be talking about a modder or someone in other ways deeply invested in the community who is given pocket change each month as some kind of hobby stipend. Which is perfectly all right precisely up to the moment where anyone involved starts to think of it as a full time gig, maybe a career even. The failure on the side of squad then isn't so much in not paying them more (although that would certainly be one way to solve it), it's in not realizing that there can't be a middle ground. What I don't get at all, no matter how you spin the story, is how anybody could be forced to overtime etc on pocket change. Sure, that stuff happens millions of times each day, but it would typically involve people at the brink of starvation in an isolated mining town or so. Remote tech workers with enough leisure time to fall deep into the rabbit hole of gaming don't quite fit that pattern.
- BEEdwards 10y agoWell see humans unlike companies have this thing called dedication, they'll work insane hours for little pay because they believe in what they are doing. Companies who are dedicated to nothing, but money will lash a rope around them and ride it to the bank. It's called capitalism...
- usrusr 10y ago> dedication We would not be talking about this if it were a number of unmistakable volunteers quitting after running out of dedication. Add 200$/month and you get a situation where both sides are prone to confuse a bit of thank-you-cash with an actual job.
- gogopuppygogo 10y agoThe 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 hours in startup companies are not new nor are they going away. This was a startup for all intensive purposes.
- r00fus 10y agoTo be honest, KSP's a hell of a resume entry. It's like asking someone why they might join the Peace Corps.
- jonknee 10y agoExcept a version of the Peace Corps where the suits are raking in tens of millions of dollars on the back of your nearly free labor.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoThe Olympics and the NCAA. EDIT: I'm not saying its right, I'm saying it happens far more often than it should (as long as people decide not to opt out of being exploited).
- x0x0 10y agoThe NCAA is far worse. KSP was exploitative, but at least these employees could quit and get a different job. If you want to play pro football/basketball, the ncaa owns you. And they're gonna make sure that everyone around gets paid (coaches, universities, chancellors, shoe sponsors) while the athletes stay broke, poor, and never really end up getting that supposed education either. With free risk of life-altering injury!
- gambiting 10y agoWell, games don't really make a lot of money, unless you are King or another mobile giant, or make CoD or Fifa. I work at one of the largest games companies in the world, and all I can say is that for every game that makes millions of dollars, we have 20 projects that never even see a public announcement and eventually die, yet still cost us tons of money. That's where most of the money goes. But yeah, programmers are hilariously underpaid, until they get to Senior level or above - there's just loads of people to fill junior positions.
- untog 10y agoNo. 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.
- jonknee 10y agoYikes, that's only 60 sold licenses to pay for a whole year's worth of salary. They have sold over 1.5m licenses on Steam alone: http://steamspy.com/app/220200 http://steamspy.com/app/220200 Absolutely shameful.
- bobbles 10y agoTO put this in perspective, they made about $60 million, and paid out probably less than $60 thousand total as salary here in the 1.5 ish years the game has been out.
- vintermann 10y agoI really don't get it. If the owners make that much, why would they want to be such total jerks? At this point it would cost them extremely little to pay a decent wage. It's not as if it's fiscally prudent either, since losing your good name and having all the developers walk out on you isn't exactly cheap.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- emodendroket 10y agoWell, the obvious answer is that better offers weren't at hand.