New NYC pay legislation offers us a uncommon perception into what game devs actually make
On: November 7, 2022
A brand new legislation in New York Metropolis is giving us an uncommon perception into the earnings of game builders at among the world’s largest game studios, Axios stories. The legislation requires that—as of November 1—corporations in NYC should embrace a “good religion wage vary” for the roles they promote, game studios included.
NYC is not precisely a hub for game growth, however it’s house to places of work from heavy-hitters like Rockstar, Take-Two, Activision, and Epic. New York job listings posted by these corporations have revealed what you’ll be able to anticipate to earn working for among the world’s largest video games corporations in probably the most costly cities on Earth.
Rockstar is first up and most intensive, ranging extensively—relying on job sort and seniority—from $50k to $57k for an affiliate dialogue designer all the best way as much as almost $200k for the corporate’s varied open director positions. These are all above NYC’s median particular person earnings for 2020 (about $34k), however with the town’s infamously extortionate lease costs, I think Rockstar’s new affiliate dialogue designers have a prolonged commute of their future.
Take-Two, Rockstar’s father or mother firm, affords comparable pay for related positions. Activision solely has a single NYC-based job open at present, so we are able to solely inform {that a} measurement lead place—a advertising and marketing analytics job requiring 5 or extra years of expertise—will web you anyplace between $77k to $114k a yr. Predictably, none of those corporations have prolonged the brand new pay transparency coverage to areas exterior NYC, so we will not even examine Activision’s pay in New York to the pay it affords individuals in related positions elsewhere.
Anyway, get able to be depressed, as a result of if you wish to make the large bucks in NYC, you want to work as a product advertising and marketing director of metaverse growth for Epic. Pulling anyplace from $197k to over 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 {dollars} of a yr, you may get to play a number one function in Epic’s metaverse ambitions, no matter they’re and no matter which means. In all probability one thing to do with legs.
It isn’t all dangerous: Epic does appear to pay comparatively nicely even for positions that are not shepherding us towards dystopia. An information analyst can anticipate something from $126k to $163k, whereas extra senior roles begin out at round $160k and hit $210k on the excessive finish. Simply, you already know, somebody might be going to ask you to do some metaverse nonsense sooner or later.
The pay transparency legislation is a uncommon glimpse into the normally opaque world of video games trade salaries, and related legal guidelines are about to return into impact in Washington and California. With a bit of luck, they will not be the final. We might all do with being extra open about our salaries: It makes it so much more durable to get taken for a journey.
