3 ms·

The game industry as a whole was pretty fucked when I left. I remember doing the 40hr+1.5x overtime calculation and realizing that if I wasn't salaried I'd be m

The game industry as a whole was pretty fucked when I left. I remember doing the 40hr+1.5x overtime calculation and realizing that if I wasn't salaried I'd be making $4/hr with the mandatory hours we were working(70-90 hrs/week). I tossed 2 months of PTO to leave that industry(yay Washington laws) and made up the difference in the first 2.5 paychecks of the new gig. Be careful of industries that over-index on "passion" and don't compensate people accordingly. Last I checked that industry was still built on chewing through new faces every ~3 years or so. Taking care of your people makes business sense and I wish more companies got that.

api 6y ago
Any industry with more people passionate about getting into it then there are jobs develops a whole host of pathologies from overwork and low pay to influence cliques, nepotism, the "casting couch," etc.
davidgay 6y ago
80 hrs/week is ~4000 hr/year. Your salary was only ~$16000/year?
- vvanders 6y ago
  You have to factor in the 1.5x overtime that's standard on hourly. I went back and did the numbers, it was closer to $6hr but well below minimum wage for a dev position. From the little bit of salaries I heard art, design and test had it even worse.
  - pandaman 6y ago
    80 h/week at 1.5x overtime for 40 hours = 100h/week * 50 weeks (less holidays) = 5000 hours a year. At $6/h it makes 30K/y. This looks very low for the US tbqh, even for a non-programmer. When I started at my first job in the US game industry in the late 90s I've made 75K in a small independent studio. I had probably 3 years of experience at that time but no shipped games, I also was a foreigner on a temp visa so I don't think I had significantly more than a fresh grad would have got at the same position. This looks like QA salary from more than 10 years ago but where did you get a salaried QA job?
    - falcolas 6y ago
      EA, about 15-20 years ago, was paying $35k for programmers, and working them ~80 hours a week. It was so bad that EA lost a lawsuit that cost them about $90k per impacted employee, since the courts ruled that they were being treated as hourly employees, not salaried. That is to say, due to “passion”, entry level game programmers aren’t making much more than $40k a year. They have no negotiating power going in, since there’s a hundred others who will willingly take their place at the low wages, just to be in the videogame industry.
      - pandaman 6y ago
        Do you mean the ea_spouse lawsuit? I don't know what EA cost had been but seeing that affected people were paid 5-15K I doubt it was 90K on the front end. As for $35K for programmers - maybe in Canada? I don't believe for a second EA could get any significant number $35K programmers in their main studios in the US (CA,TX) or even Florida. And when I worked there 15 years ago they equalized salaries across the internal studios with COL adjustments.
vkazanov 6y ago
I have a somewhat similar experience! For a while I was working as a server-side programmer for a major gaming company making a MMO game based in Eastern Europe. The background of my manager was network programming, and they did a lot of network programming, so he hired me as network programmer, not a game programmer. Salary was world-class. Then for personal reasons (got married) I moved to London, UK. The same company had an office in London but they were only hiring gamedevs for the same job. Those guys were offering less money in London then I had back home. Long story short I do my server-side programming in a social network company now.

api 6y ago

Any industry with more people passionate about getting into it then there are jobs develops a whole host of pathologies from overwork and low pay to influence cliques, nepotism, the "casting couch," etc.

davidgay 6y ago

80 hrs/week is ~4000 hr/year. Your salary was only ~$16000/year?

vvanders 6y ago
You have to factor in the 1.5x overtime that's standard on hourly. I went back and did the numbers, it was closer to $6hr but well below minimum wage for a dev position. From the little bit of salaries I heard art, design and test had it even worse.
- pandaman 6y ago
  80 h/week at 1.5x overtime for 40 hours = 100h/week * 50 weeks (less holidays) = 5000 hours a year. At $6/h it makes 30K/y. This looks very low for the US tbqh, even for a non-programmer. When I started at my first job in the US game industry in the late 90s I've made 75K in a small independent studio. I had probably 3 years of experience at that time but no shipped games, I also was a foreigner on a temp visa so I don't think I had significantly more than a fresh grad would have got at the same position. This looks like QA salary from more than 10 years ago but where did you get a salaried QA job?
  - falcolas 6y ago
    EA, about 15-20 years ago, was paying $35k for programmers, and working them ~80 hours a week. It was so bad that EA lost a lawsuit that cost them about $90k per impacted employee, since the courts ruled that they were being treated as hourly employees, not salaried. That is to say, due to “passion”, entry level game programmers aren’t making much more than $40k a year. They have no negotiating power going in, since there’s a hundred others who will willingly take their place at the low wages, just to be in the videogame industry.
    - pandaman 6y ago
      Do you mean the ea_spouse lawsuit? I don't know what EA cost had been but seeing that affected people were paid 5-15K I doubt it was 90K on the front end. As for $35K for programmers - maybe in Canada? I don't believe for a second EA could get any significant number $35K programmers in their main studios in the US (CA,TX) or even Florida. And when I worked there 15 years ago they equalized salaries across the internal studios with COL adjustments.

vkazanov 6y ago

I have a somewhat similar experience! For a while I was working as a server-side programmer for a major gaming company making a MMO game based in Eastern Europe. The background of my manager was network programming, and they did a lot of network programming, so he hired me as network programmer, not a game programmer. Salary was world-class. Then for personal reasons (got married) I moved to London, UK. The same company had an office in London but they were only hiring gamedevs for the same job. Those guys were offering less money in London then I had back home. Long story short I do my server-side programming in a social network company now.