Game developer salaries revisited

One of the most popular articles I’ve posted on the blog was the one on salaries in the games industry from back in 2008. What made the article extra interesting was that I mined the public H1-B visa database for games companies. Unlike salary surveys, where people can claim arbitrary wages (and the submitted salaries are never posted), the H1-B data contains actual wages! In other words, it is a rare opportunity to get some objective data points on industry salaries.

Since some time has passed since I posted the article I thought it would be interesting to repeat the process, which I did, and here are the results.

Game industry salaries from the 2009 H1-B database

This data below is based on the “H-1B Efile Data” 2009 txt file (a huge zipped text file, link). I mined the file for games companies I recognized, and I converted hourly data into yearly salary using the conversion

yearly salary = hourly salary * 37.5 hours/week * 52 weeks.

Converted salary data is marked with (*) in the table below. While I tried to be thorough, I may have missed a game company or two in that huge data set. Unlike last time, I decided to show all job categories (so programmers, artists, designers, etc).

For programmers it would also be interesting to compare game industry salaries against companies like Google, NVidia, Intel, Netflix, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple. For artists, relevant comparisons could include Pixar, ILM, Digital Domain, Dreamworks, to name a few. All these companies have salary data points in the H1-B database. I have not performed this comparison, however. I may do so at some later point, or perhaps someone else will step up to the plate and do so.

Unfortunately no Microsoft data went into the table below as it is near impossible to distinguish a Microsoft game developer from a Microsoft Windows (or whatever) developer in the H1-B data. There are a few exceptions that stand out as game developer positions, but I didn’t try to extract all of these. Some include “lead vehicle artist” ($85,000), “technical art lead” ($95,000), “general manager (live games)” ($230,000), and “general manager (windows live games)” ($220,000). I can say, though, that the average programmer salary at Microsoft (across all job categories) is $92,400.

Caveat comparison shopping

Like last time, I feel compelled to point out that before you go ask for a raise because of something you read here, remember that the salaries above do not include or reveal factors like other compensation (bonuses, profit sharing), location and cost of living, seniority, job responsibilities, talent, etc.

P.S. We’re hiring at SCEA Santa Monica. Generalist programmers (with bent towards tools/tech, gameplay, online gameplay, graphics/tech), environment artists, character artists, level designers, animators, and more. Inquire within, or apply online.

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