do game developers(all types) earn much less that other programmers?

moeen k said:
Amazon technical challenges are less than a high tech game company like Riot or Naughty Dog

The challenges and required skillsets are different, for sure, but they aren't necessarily that much easier at a BigTech firm. Game companies tend to have more of a focus on low-level performance and developer/artist productivity, where as the big firms focus more on scale (both technical and organisational).

Most game companies don't have to design for a billion unique users logging in every day, or for working in tandem with 5,000 other software engineers, but both of those are just a random Tuesday at Facebook.

moeen k said:
game developers work on bigger challenges and in harder conditions and earn much less because they love making video games?

Much of the time, yes. A lot of people dream about working on games, and that makes their labour easy to exploit.

moeen k said:
is there any exceptions to the story?

Sure, there are always exceptions. If you work for an in-house game developer at a regular tech firm (say, Amazon Game Studios, or parts of Oculus) you can expect similar pay to their other engineers. You'll also find that many smaller studios that advertise better work/life balance than the big AAA developers.

From my perspective from within the rat race, I could say that there are a few companies in my country which offer an somehow avarage payment as the other IT industry does. We don't talk about indie comapnies or such companies that claim themselfes indie to have arguments for paying like an indie, those companies are at a 10% - 20% ratio of what the big IT guys offer in exchange for your work. Hell, I had a busniess talk with a companie which payed their leads round about 1800$ / month because “the city is that cheap”. TL;DR the city is one of the most expensive ones and that company acted like a scammer to it's employees but I didn't took that job so what ?

I know, that a good part of the employees of my current AAA employer are complaining about payment being too low, especially artists and game designers do so. From my perspective, I earn what I need and a little on top so I don't have to worry about paying my bills. And work is very relaxed in comparsion to my indie dev days.

In my opinion there are 2 major problems which games have and that's sales on the one hand and education on the other. Sales is a point which is very complicated busniess thing in our industry. Your product needs to be bought from enough customers to make your and/or a publisher's cut while on the same time, the price must not be too high or you can be sure to sell a lot less. People these days aren't honoring a good game as back in the 90s where you spend 120$ for an Nintendo 64 game. Today Nintendo sells for round about 50$ and that's just the initial release price. Looking on Steam for discount and you're at 80% of the release price or even less when you're part of a specific sale. Looking at general IT companies like Facebook, who lost 3.3 Million $ only during their downtime, you know where the limiting factor of payment is in game companies!

Maybe also some jobs in games business are less challanging as others, I for my career have already sucessfully been involved in game design as well as level design, but I'm a (creative) programmer.

Education on the other hand is quiet a topic which leads to false expectations of people fresh on the market. Especially companies like SAE, who specifically educate youngsters to get into games industry, often raise false expectations on payment vs. the skill level needed to reach that payment. A newby programmer of 2 years in pure chalk and talk education is told to earn 8.000$ - 10.000$ / month as entry level payment. This is a big problem because we often had such people in our indie company, which were rejected immediately because they weren't even able to perform the easiest tasks on thair own.

In general, I can say that game development has it's challenges and maybe other IT companies also have challenges they have to solve (which I don't know because I never worked for such a challanging company). For me, games are exciting and their tech is challanging (especially game engine tech) and that's why I decided to go into games business when I was a kid (back in the 90s!). Reality is that working a AAA company is less challanging and/or I just don't have the right job and/or project to work on, but you as a single individual are affected from a lot of bureaucracy which massively slows down everything and most of the time isn't fun at all. Fortunately, I have my hobby where I design (board) games and our game (engine) SDK project which I spend a lot of effort into. Otherwise I'd already have decided to get unemployed and receive payments from the government

@swiftcoder maybe in general video games give services to less amount of people but a game like league of legends, there are 10m people that playing it in the same time. and consider that number of requests and data that are sent by a user/player is much more than a regular service. consider a turn-based or real-time multiplayer game. there are tons of messages and requests are being sent in a second so I believe many challenges on regular services are even worse in the game industry. and sometimes they are more critical and a simple mistake can break the whole experience.

a good example is that many coding practices like TDD are being used in both sides of client/backend development in video games. os I still believe that game dev is much more challenging.

Yes, game development generally pays less. Early in my career, I didn't realize how bad the difference was, but over time, I've gotten more insight into the absolute numbers.

Some game-related companies may pay alright – generally, the really big ones. Amazon studios pays Amazon level salaries, which are slightly-below Facebook and Google, but way-above your typical game studio. EPIC may pay alright for their developers and the area. Roblox pays alright for their developers and the area (I happen to know they do!) But a general content-producing studio, doesn't. Facebook is paying Facebook-level compensation for their metaverse project.

So, game development studios have to compete in other ways. “You get to work on games!” is actually a draw to some people, especially creative ones. “We don't require the same level of professionalism that the higher-paying companies do” might also be a draw, and many studios seem to offer that (and the baggage that comes with it.) “It's actually exhilarating to live for the ship date, together with a team of others who do the same,” is also a draw. This is why cohesive military units are so effective, too – they form a tribe, which is something humans have evolved to thrive in. And, finally, “you may get royalties” used to be a thing, but given how big teams are, and how long they take to develop, and how much people cycle in and out of teams, and how much shareholders want their profits once the game ships, that seems to be much less of a thing these days.

If you are a well-performing engineer who can do alright in a corporate environment, you will absolutely make more money in the enterprise than you would at a game studio. And if you can work the necessary hours and focus on the necessary profits, you can make even more money in finance (hedge funds and trading/investment banks, especially.) And many game developers may actually be more temperamentally suited to finance, than they are to a typical enterprise, so I would expect there to be a flow of talent going that way.

It's a question that comes up often, and answering it takes some nuance.

First, “other programmers” is tricky. Which other programmers?

It's easy to look at the highest paid, highest profile programming fields and say they're normal. But they really aren't.

FAANG companies are an outlier. That's why we have the label for them. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google pay unusually high rates, but they are big and employ a lot of people so it gets treated as “normal”. Many make 3x-4x or more than the average and median wages across all fields (which covers everything from flipping burgers to CEOs), and much more than the programming field in general. Many are in the top 5%, nearly all in the top 10% of wages. Their highest pay tiers are 1%'er income (being a 1%'er is lower wages than many people think) but few people in the company earn those rates.

Investment banking is an outlier. Investment banking programmers pay unusually high rates. Likewise, many make 3x-4x or more than the national average and median wages, and more than the field in general. Similarly, these companies pay a fortune that puts a person in the top earnings tiers.

If you look at the vast world of programmers, people work in every industry on the back office cobbling together accounting and ordering database stuff, logistical software, tools for their staff, and more. Programmers at manufacturing plants, programmers at stores of all industries from sporting goods to dairy goods to forklift delivery to shampoo distributors, all of them have inventory systems and web sites and POS systems and many of them employ programmers. Hospitals, schools, mining, construction, transportation, farming, banks, real estate, lawyers, entertainment, etc. Every industry employs programmers these days once they get large enough. Then you have more mundane stuff, all the little microcontrollers and chips that run the world: the wristwatches, the Bluetooth headsets, the dashcams, the store security cameras, the software driving those cameras, the TVs, the set top boxes, the microwaves and kitchen ovens, the little scales used to see if you need a second stamp on your postage. The software driving the retail stores where those items are sold. Their IT departments. All of it needs software, written by programmers. These are the real “normal” programmers. Normal programmers make about double the typical average wages crossing all fields and are generally well paid, but nothing as glamorous as the FAANG or investment banking programmers.

That said, the game industry has its own elements.

Supply and demand play a part. The allure of game programming certainly is a draw to the field, so it depresses wages at the entry level since lots of young fresh blood wants in. That goes away with experience, because there is less competition for people with 5+ or 10+ years of experience. As you advance in the career any specialties you have will help with wages. Experience helps generally. Senior and advanced programmers are paid more. Specialties like networking and graphics are paid more. Remember that wages are whatever you negotiate, they aren't dictated from the heavens.

From working in various industries inside and outside games, once you've got about 10 years experience the wages are similar with other industries. You might be able to negotiate higher or lower based on your background, but it's what you negotiate. If you are an outlier in some fashion, somehow you make a name for yourself you can command a much higher salary, but that's rare. They aren't FAANG wages, nor are they investment banking wages, but if you're a fair negotiator and know your worth you can get a good pay in line with “normal” programming in other fields. I've compared notes not just with salary surveys and public numbers, but also with two brothers who are programmers plus a few extended family relatives in various software fields. The pay rates in games aren't out of line, none of us are buying mansions on the hill but we all have fairly nice upper-middle-class lives.

As programmers generally we have pretty great jobs. We make far more than average wages, we get to twiddle our fingers sitting at a desk all day with little strenuous effort nor danger, and we get to create worlds. We have relatively good benefits and perks. If you want to change careers to something outside of games that's generally an option if you've developed competency as a programmer, so if you feel there is a pay disparity and that issue becomes an overriding concern you can work in some other field without much difficulty. And if you do that and discover that the grass really isn't any greener (I've worked programming in several businesses including broadcast television software, office accounting software, financial reporting, and boring generic data storage when game jobs weren't immediately forthcoming) you have the option to come back if you want.

frob said:
FAANG companies are an outlier.

Except they're companies that hires anyone who can write code and show up to work on time and not insult their coworkers. They are sucking the markets pretty dry of talent, where they can. So, while they might be just a handful of companies, they set the rules by which everyone else have to play, if they want people who can write code, show up more or less on time, and not insult their coworkers. (If you're OK with compromising on one of those axis, you may be able to do better.)

jon1 said:

frob said:
FAANG companies are an outlier.

Except they're companies that hires anyone who can write code and show up to work on time and not insult their coworkers.

This is… not the case. FAANG hiring processes are pretty infamous for rejecting experienced engineers over algorithms trivia and culture fit. And they tend to aggressively “manage out” (i.e. fire) anyone who doesn't perform to expectations, or who is just a bit too slow in securing their next promotion.

@swiftcoder Maybe we have a difference baseline for what “can write code” and “doesn't insult coworkers” means then?

People don't play that much any more as they did a decade ago, most people are interested in social media, videos and communities instead (the number of gamers increased in absolute value, but relatively to other fields, it didnt increased too much). Despite of this, there is a small increase of profit in gamedev. Even so, the increase of the profit on the video games industry cant sustain the increased amount of number of developers needed for a modern 3d videogame title, and overall there are too many game developers and wanabe game developers who want to compete for the money basket.

Of course there will be always very succesful projects who bring a lot of fortune, and there will be “big corps” who can pay a big sack if they need to, but the opposite will be far more relevant. I personally also observe decreased profits in my circles, and significant decreases in my own profits as well. (Actually the last one is my ,,fault'' because i refuse to do anything else than jrpg engines, as i have no interest in doing something that i dont really like.)

to cut this debate in short, if gamedev is your passion, then you would do it even for 0k usd a year, if your question is if you can sustain a modern and quality lifestyle on gamedev alone in the long term, the answer is probably no.

(this is my opinion, you are free to disagree)

Geri said:
if gamedev is your passion, then you would do it even for 0k usd a year

And this, in a nutshell, is how game studios keep managing to underpay gamedevs :/

Geri said:
People don't play that much any more as they did a decade ago

Numbers tell a different story. Gaming is going super strong. Growth is largely horizontal, though, which explains the numbers you quote: Any given service that was big 10 years ago, probably hasn't grown tremendously since then. But entire new services have sprung up! While Roblox existed in 2011, it wasn't nearly like what it is today, for example. (And Minecraft. And all the Battle Royales. And Twitch. And so on!)

I think this is a philosophical / epistemological question. It's more likely that you personally have changed your life situation and now interact with more people who play less, and thus you're coming to that conclusion.

This is similar to the common question “why is the world so broken now? 30 years ago everything was fine!” The world wasn't actually fine 30 years ago, just that younger people have less awareness of how things actually work (and usually, parents shield children from that knowledge.)

Geri said:
if gamedev is your passion, then you would do it even for 0k usd a year

Yes. The question is whether you should work on someone elses project for $0k/year. You can get an IT job, pay the bills, and spend your evenings on a passion project. Some people paint, or play in a band, or build watches. Some people build games! The drawback is that you'll never work on the leading-edge AAA projects that way. To do that, you really have to dive into the business. It might be a good experience for a few years, but always be aware of options.

hplus0603 said:

spend your evenings on a passion project. Some people paint, or play in a band, or build watches. Some people build games! The drawback is that you'll never work on the leading-edge AAA projects that way.

Agreed - but leading-edge AAA projects can be a different way to describe “games that sell a lot”. There might be some shiny new tech in there, or a bit of creative room, but it might still be more satisfying on working on a passion projects and I think it mostly is.

Of course how much of a drawback it is, is up to the individual: Working an entry-level job odd hours on intangible middleware somewhere in the city is exactly why I decided to skip commercial game companies.
I'm not saying that there aren't better entry-level jobs or more interesting tasks, but with a hobby project next to a job, at least I decide what to do. Screw games that are made for the sake of selling a lot. Sorry for going a bit off-course…

leading-edge AAA projects can be a different way to describe “games that sell a lot”

It's more than that – it's very large teams, where each part of the game gets hopefully significant attention.

If you want to be part of a world where NPCs have individual AI and desires, vehicles drive and handle robustly and with variety, vegetation dynamically interacts with the environment, the weather and climate changes over time, and where every place you go, is a new, hand-crafted, delightful set piece, then all of that needs to be created, and you just can't do all of that on your own. And, no, you can't buy each of those things on the marketplaces – the marketplace products for the main engines are generally not up to the quality bar necessary, and for the few assets that are, they don't integrate to make a whole bigger than the parts, because they're not iterated together.

If you want to be part of shipping a game like that, there's really no way to do it other than going AAA, one way or another. If you're OK with producing only one small piece of that, or producing something of significantly reduced scope, then you can do it as a passion project. If “making very neat terrain” scratches your itch, absolutely possible to do while doing 9-5 in a non-game company! If “complete integrated world with best-of-breed everything” is your bar … different story!

hplus0603 said:

leading-edge AAA projects can be a different way to describe “games that sell a lot”

It's more than that – it's very large teams, where each part of the game gets hopefully significant attention.

Yes - I wrote can be on purpose; but namely to try and separate passion projects, that you also comment on, from AAA projects. You hit the nail on the head:

hplus0603 said:

If you want to be part of a world where NPCs have individual AI and desires, vehicles drive and handle robustly and with variety, vegetation dynamically interacts with the environment, the weather and climate changes over time, and where every place you go, is a new, hand-crafted, delightful set piece, then all of that needs to be created, and you just can't do all of that on your own.

If one is all about having a large and dynamic world for the sake of having a large, dynamic world, then it's going to take time or require some reduction in scope. I don't think it's completely unrealistic to cover all of them single-handedly to some degree, though.
If you want to be creative, innovative and not just go for “best-of-breed” subsystems for the sake of doing that, there's hardly a worse place to go than places delivering annual AAA “play it safe”-titles.

I think what ticked me off is that you wrote “The drawback is that you'll never work on the leading-edge AAA projects that way.”, and in my opinion it's not as necessarily a drawback.
Ultimately, I think it depends on how financial stability, spare time and creativity play together for the individual.

Agreed! Also, an important distinction that I can read through the lines: “AAA” means different things. Being on the Borderlands franchise/teams is different from being on the Battlefield franchise/teams is different from being on the GTA franchise/teams is different from being on the Elder Scrolls franchise/teams.

The short answer to this is: Yes - game development companies pay less.

All companies who hire people sell a narrative to their employees. For some, it is “we pay the best salaries”. In others, it is “We have the brightest/coolest people” or “You get to work with the coolest technology in the world” or “Our employees deliver value to billions of people”, etc, etc. Every company will milk that advantage for everything it is worth, when trying to hire people - and especially if they can pressure the salary. I've interviewed with big/cool tech companies and heard the “People don't work here for the money” more than once, as an excuse to offer a salary below market average.

Game companies use the “You get to create games” as their narrative, and it is incredibly effective - especially to young impressionable men who are gamers.

For every entry level position I've ever recruited for, there's always been dozens upon dozens of fresh-faced graduates. In a normal situation, you'd be looking for the best candidates - and you're doing that in competition with a ton of other companies who are also looking for the best and brightest. That means you'll have a lot of competition, and one way to beat the competition, is to give a better starting salary. When recruiting for a game developer, there are a number of factors that play in. 1) I would not have much competition; the number of serious game development companies are not that many, 2) Most of the applicants would be passionate about getting into games (as someone wrote above - if you love game development, you'd work for nothing). These factors make it much easier to pressure salaries downwards, because if your preferred candidate says no, there is always a handful of others who will accept.

Roblox is hiring in Silicon Valley, and they are reportedly paying up to $400K at the engineering management level.