I was searching for a Game Developer Documentary on YouTube and came across this video where this guy was speaking about Programmer salaries in the gaming industry. Anyway, this guy said that the average salary is $80,000. That's not what had me surprised. He said that there are often Bonus and Profit Sharing programs. I don't know if this was an exaggeration, but he said that people at ID Software are getting an One Million Dollars bonus on top of their base salary. He said that often you can run into these programs. Is this true, because this is the first time I am hearing about this o_o. Sorry if this has been brought up before

Profit sharing is relatively common, but there are a ton of factors that go into it. The first is simply how much profit a game actually generates. Believe it not, most games don't generate any real profit and publishers ride on the few that do wind up mega successful to draw in their revenue. Secondly, there is your share in the company. While some of the individuals at id software may be getting that large of bonus checks, I can assure you it is very few of them. Those that do get them have been with the company for a LONG time and own a piece of the company.

Ahh, now I understand, thanks for clearing that up for me!

A little more beyond the previous post, many employers offer bonuses to their employees when the company is doing well.


Note that a bonus is not guaranteed and you should plan your life around not seeing any bonus. When comparing jobs you should often disregard any bonuses they claim and instead look at the base salary. If/when you do get a bonus, know that half the money will be withheld for taxes, so a $6000 bonus is really just $3000 in your pocket.



In my experience game companies are more employee-friendly when it comes to bonuses.

In many businesses software development is an iterative process. Internal software is just there to support an ongoing profitable business system. Externally released software is sold in various states and supported financially for many years. Since they have a fairly steady revenue stream they can generally afford to pay their developers a better salary up front and don't have a strong need for bonuses.

Money flows a little differently in games. There is a huge capital investment with no return, followed by a big return and then a tail of diminishing returns. Unless the studio is releasing 6+ games around the year they don't have a steady revenue stream. It is difficult for studios to pay a big salary during development. When they are able to recoup the initial investment the owners take a big sigh of relief and tend to reward the employees as best they can. If a game has poor sales they may not be able to recover the initial investment, which means the money has to come out of another title's profit line. Nobody likes it when it happens because EVERYBODY loses.




I have found excellent bonus systems at nearly every game company I've looked at. They are not guaranteed because they can't guarantee sales, but they are earnestly promised. I have seen (and received) bonus checks for thousands and ten thousands of dollars. I have seen a few wonderful employers cut back on their own personal benefits to reward their workers when sales are weak.

Most of the 'better' game companies will have an annual bonus plan that is based roughly on your salary, work history, and the company's bottom line. Others of the 'better' game companies will have a bonus plan that is awarded six to twelve months after each game is released and money is flowing in. They will either directly tell employees how the bonus is tracking or indirectly state an approximate bottom line.

Of course, the bad game companies will have problems on everything. These shops tend to suck people in, chew them up, and spit them out. They are easily avoided by talking with former employees, noticing a high turnover rate, and by simple word-of-mouth. Unfortunately the high turnover means they hire many aspiring game developers who don't do their homework, so they give the industry a bad reputation for quality of life.



When I was working outside of games this large of bonus is rarely promised, and when it is promised they seldom deliver. More often the biggest "bonuses" were given as an ownership option that only gains value after many more years at the company, and only if the company does well.

The best bonus I received outside of games was an unpromised bonus when the company had an unexpected multimillion dollar sale to a state government. Beyond that there was often a small annual bonus ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, but it was fairly small compared to those of within the industry.

Bonuses are fairly common in the games industry but million dollar bonuses are not. Five figure bonuses are not uncommon though. I've heard about employees at Epic (regular employees, not the founders) receiving 6 figure bonuses for Gears of War so large bonuses are not unheard of, I wouldn't bank on receiving that kind of money though...

One thing you need to remember about average salary figures is that:

1) They are averages. If you have a senior architect/developer making $120,000 and an entry-level programmer making $40,000, then the average salary for the two is going to be $80,000. If they add in artists, product managers, etc as "game developers" it can mix things up even more. Long story short, you shouldn't expect to graduate college, get into the game industry, and make $80,000 a year right off the bat.

2) They don't account for cost-of-living. I do have a friend who got a game development job out of college for $80,000. He lives in California, though. My job out of college had a salary $40,000. Adjusted for cost-of-living, though, we were roughly on equal footing. I actually managed to save more in that $40,000 then when I moved to Chicago for a 50% raise. Where you are spending your money is as important as how much you make. Its possible that game development companies are simply skewed to high-cost-of-living areas.

Make sure to keep your expectations in line with reality. If you're trying to figure out what kind of salary to expect, try to find some people who are comfortable discussing their salary and talking about what they got at your level. (Note: This is kind-of hard though, because people seem to have this stupid stigma about discussing salaries, usually encouraged by the company hiring them so that people don't find out they're under-paid) The next best thing is to try to limit your salary research to the geographical area and job description as much as possible.

Averages are completely useless statistics without supporting statistics to inform you as to what they actually mean. Sure, a senior id/epic employee is going to be making shitloads of money: They're senior members of super successful high profile companies. Go back in time to join them when they first started and you'd end up making a lot of money too ;)

I'd be willing to bet you can count the number of studios who pay like that on one hand.

Yeah, from the research I've done, I hope to make from $40,000 - $55,000 yearly. But I live in New York, so I may have to move to an area with more jobs available.Yeah, I hear the big name companies do pay well like Rockstar. I plan on being a Technical Director at some point anyway, and from what I hear, they can make up to $100,000+ base, so I'm happy with that.

The annual Game Developer Salary Survey put out by Game Developer Magazine is fairly comprehensive.

They have a few editions: The free edition in the magazine (that is fairly accurate) and their website where you pay for local detailed results, and finally the super-expensive contract-restricted edition where they give you a sanitized version of their database.


Their numbers are quite accurate. The comments about an average of senior and junior developers mixed with artists don't apply because they are broken down by job type and years of experience.

This year's magazine edition was made available for free, start reading at page 31.