Each year our friends at Skillsearch gather information from people in the games industry across a range of topics: salaries, benefits, remote work, priorities, and much more. This year with covid and everyone moving to working remotely, it is more interesting than ever to see what’s happening across the industry!
UK Games and Interactive Salary and Satisfaction Overview
- Large companies (100+ people) look likely to have the lowest amount of remote work offered post covid – with an average amount of 54% of time to work remotely.
- Company funded training is the benefit that had the biggest increase from 2019 with 42% now saying it is one of their top three benefits to receive.
- Average salaries for women in the UK games industry slightly overtook their male counterparts in junior and mid-level roles for the first time, although they are still significantly behind in more senior positions.
Northern and Western Europe Games and Interactive Salary and Satisfaction Overview
- The percentage of people actively looking for a job varies across countries in the North and West of Europe. In Nordic countries only 17% of people will definitely be job hunting, but in France 36% so over a third will be.
- Producers have the biggest salary jump when moving from Senior to Lead level, with an average €16,000 increase between these job titles.
- 1 in 10 people have said that the company culture and which projects that they’re working on have become less important to them over 2020. Matched with 51% saying work/life balance is more important this may see a big shift in priorities across the industry.
Southern and Eastern Europe Games and Interactive Salary and Satisfaction Overview
- Globally, most people chose to turn down job offers to stay and finish their current project, but in Southern and Eastern Europe a close second place was based on salary – 18% of job offers were turned down because the salary offered wasn’t as high as they were expecting
- The proportion of people looking to change jobs in 2021 varied hugely depending on how long the person has been at their current company. Everyone who had been at their company less than a year said that they would either definitely or potentially look to change jobs this year.
- Average female salaries were lower than their male counterparts across all seniority levels, with this gap increasing as seniority grew. The average (yearly, gross) lead salary for men is €44,000 and for women it’s €33,000.
Global Games and Interactive Salary and Satisfaction Overview
- Canada’s games industry expects to have the most remote work available to them after covid with an average of 67% of time worked remotely.
- Eastern Europe has the biggest gap between average salaries for men and women, with female salaries 28% lower
- People making console games in Eastern Europe and Canada had the highest salaries, but people making mobile games had higher average salaries in the US, Northern Europe, Western Europe, UK and Southern Europe.
Finally
A reminder that if you have any burning questions or would like to know more about a specific area, piece of data, or sample size please get in touch with Skillsearch, they're happy to help answer your questions!
Join the conversation with #SkillsearchSurvey2021 on LinkedIn & Twitter.
Check out Skillsearch's current vacancies here.
