royalties are your profit sharing agreement basically. you get paid a salary(which might be less than normal because you are banking on the project to be a hit

royalties are your profit sharing agreement basically. you get paid a salary(which might be less than normal because you are banking on the project to be a hit and receive royalties) and then a certain percentage of the sales of the game. A bonus is like a "hey we did well so here is a certain amount of money at the end of the year." The music industry also has royalties on how much a song is played and how many copies of the albums are sold. It's frequently gamed by the studios to pay very little by citing "costs associated with the distribution and recording".