How Much Money can I Make in Games?

What salary do different vocations in the German games industry make? We surveyed the salaries of the six biggest job areas in games from junior to senior and cross-referenced them with last year‘s results.

We have asked more than 100 companies from Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the average gross salary data of their employees. Specifically, to gather finer data about the different vocations, we requested monthly salaries in six areas of development: Game Design, Programming, Art, Writing & Narrative Design, Communication and Producing & Product Management. Since seniority is an important factor in the salary options of a single person, we asked for differentiations in the salary data for junior, regular and senior employees in each vocation. All data was gathered anonymously, and participant from Switzerland were asked to transfer their salaries into euros on the current exchange rate of their participation day. The data mixes, necessarily due to the anonymity of the participants, big and small cor­porations and companies from all kinds of game industry backgrounds. As this survey marks the second volume of salary data collection, we were able to compare valu­able information to last year‘s data. In 2023, too few companies gave information on Communication and Narrative Design salaries, and as such, we had to exclude those vocations from our statistics last year. This year however, a thirty percent increase of companies shared their data over all vocations. We can therefore share sufficiently anonymized data for 2024‘s salary options over all expertises.

It is still worth noting that both Communication and Narrative Design had the lowest submissions each. In case of Communication, this becomes clear with a side view on the overall structure of games communication in the industry. Most studios outsource this work to PR and marketing agencies, thus having themselves no information on the specific salary data of the account managers. Narrative Design, in contrast, is often done by combined job occupants, like game designers, especially in smaller stu­dios. Their salary data then would often be included in the respective parent job column instead of in Narrative Design specifically.

Producers and Programmers Make the Most

Looking at the average number over each vocation and each seniority level produces the most openly interesting results. On average, a programmer in the German-speaking games industry earns 4,142 Euros, followed by producers and/or product managers with 3,965 Euros.

Programmers show massive salary growth compared to last year, when they averaged 3,886 Euros. This is not, however, because of generally increased salaries, but because of more senior position data provided by companies this year. Producers, in turn, suffered a slight decrease of averaged salaries from 4,055 Euros in 2023.

The biggest growth in average salary goes to Game Design, with 3,400 Euros in 2023 and 3,686 Euros this year, without outliers in senior positions like is the case with programming, meaning game designers indeed profited from some salary promotions in the last year. The bottom rungs are taken up, sadly, however not surprisingly, by artists with 3,389 Euros and narrative designers with 3,180 Euros. This means that averaged over all professions, a German, Swiss or Austrian game worker makes 3,680 Euros — a slight increase over last year‘s 3,589 Euros.

The comparatively well-off positions of programmers and producers are especially obvious in regular and senior positions. Both vocations feature the most gross salaries over 4,000 Euros in the dataset. Likewise, the highest-paying position in the dataset falls to a Senior Programmer, followed by several other senior programmers and senior producers. The best paid junior positions are also of the programming vocation as well.

The unfortunate mirrored position then falls to the narrative designers. The worst-paid salary in the dataset goes to a junior narrative designer. Averaged over all junior positions, junior narrative designers and junior artist make the least money on their entry-level positions. However, the difference over all juniors positions from all six vocations is much, much smaller than the difference over all senior positions, meaning that while entry-level salaries are somewhat fixed due to most juniors not being able to leverage much experience for pay-rises, a lot of seniors managed to get promoted into higher salaries. While the biggest numbers are again found in programming and producing, artists are pulling the shortest straw when it comes to senior salaries: In the dataset, artists are the only vocation where some seniors make less money than some juniors.

Artists and Writers Have Less Chance of High Salaries

Compared over all seniority levels, an average programming senior makes 1,853 Euros more than a programming junior. In Producing & Project Management, this discrepancy averages to 1,642 Euros, in Communication to 1,467 Euros, in Game Design to 1,396 Euros. Perhaps most interesting are the dramatically lower discrepancies within Art and Narrative Design, with 781 Euros and 500 Euros between junior and senior, respective­ly. Is salary distribution over se­niority in these vocations fairer than in others? Or do artists and writer indeed start out low and not experience much salary growth over their career, making the fields comparatively precarious? The findings from our dataset suggest the latter. Because while a lot of ju­nior applicants can live somewhat comfortably with low entry salaries in most fields due to lower costs of living, low salary growths in senior positions suggest unsustainability of better standards of living.

Game Workers Make Less than Comparable Industries

In general, the data, while not representative of the full gaming industry, paint a relatively bleak picture of the appeal of working in the industry. Taking comparable data from the IT industry in Germany, for example, data from salary consulting agency Consulting Partners shows an average gross salary of 5,500 Euros over all IT jobs in Germany. That‘s more than 1,300 Euros more than a programmer in the games industry, and almost 2,000 Euros more than the average salary over the whole dataset. With ever more harsh competition over professional workers in all fields, the German-speaking games industry will have to step up its game when it comes to attractive salaries, or experts may wander off to adjacent industries.

This survey evaluation has been originally published in GamesMarkt+ Working in Games from June 2024. You can also find the data from our 2023 survey here.

Additionally, we have partnered with Values Value and InGame Job to feature the results of a Europe-wide survey showing the needs of game worker from across the continent in 2024.