We aggregated data from US, EU, Non-EU Europe and Germany to provide salary comparisons over all Western markets. With additional layoff data, the comparison paints a picture of the state of games.
Making your dream game can be rewarding in its own way, but let’s be honest: Work must pay the bills. And the games industry has historically been a place where salaries have been contested quite heavily, because other industries looking for comparable skillsets often featured higher wages. As an example: In a 2024 survey GamesMarkt conducted on the German salary situation of game programmers, we found that game programmers earned around 24% less than what a salary survey by Consulting Partners found for comparable positions in the overall IT industry in Germany.
So when people try to break into the games industry now, salary certainly hasn’t become less of an important factor in the face of industry layoff waves. We therefore collected salary data from three different surveys from around the Western hemisphere and put them into comparison. If you are looking for a games job in Europe or the US, this data aggregation is indispensable.
