New NYC pay law gives us a rare insight into what game devs really make
And metaverse equals megabucks.
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A new law in New York City is giving us an unusual insight into the earnings of game developers at some of the world’s biggest game studios,Axiosreports. The law requires that—as of November 1—companies in NYC must include a “good faith salary range” for the jobs they advertise, game studios included.
NYC isn’t exactly a hub for game development, but it is home to offices from heavy-hitters like Rockstar, Take-Two,Activision, and Epic. New York job listings posted by those companies have revealed what you can expect to earn working for some of the world’s biggest games companies in one of themost expensive cities on Earth.
Rockstar is first up and most extensive, ranging widely—depending on job type and seniority—from $50k to $57k for anassociate dialogue designerall the way up to nearly $200k for the company’s variousopen director positions. Those are all aboveNYC’s median individual incomefor 2020 (about $34k), but with the city’s infamouslyextortionate rent prices, I suspect Rockstar’s new associate dialogue designers have a lengthy commute in their future.
Take-Two, Rockstar’s parent company, offers comparable pay for similar positions. Activision only has a single NYC-based job open currently, so we can only tell that ameasurement lead position—a marketing analytics job requiring five or more years of experience—will net you anywhere between $77k to $114k a year. Predictably, none of these companies have extended the new pay transparency policy to areas outside NYC, so we can’t even compare Activision’s pay in New York to the pay it offers people in similar positions elsewhere.
Anyway, get ready to be depressed, because if you want to make the big bucks in NYC, you need to work as aproduct marketing director of metaverse developmentfor Epic. Pulling anywhere from $197k to over a quarter of a million dollars of a year, you’ll get to play a leading role in Epic’s metaverse ambitions, whatever they are andwhatever that means.Probably something to do with legs.
It’s not all bad: Epic does seem to pay relatively well even for positions that aren’t shepherding us toward dystopia. Adata analystcan expect anything from $126k to $163k, whilemore senior rolesstart out at around $160k and hit $210k at the high end. Just, you know, someone is probably going to ask you to do some metaverse nonsense at some point.
The pay transparency law is a rare glimpse into the usually opaque world of games industry salaries, and similar laws are about to come into effect inWashingtonandCalifornia. With any luck, they won’t be the last. We could all do with being more open about our salaries: It makes it a lot harder to get taken for a ride.
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One of Josh’s first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he’s been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He’ll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin’s Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you’re all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.
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