MCV’s 2016 Salary Survey: How much are you worth?

This year’s Salary Survey highlights how little has changed in games industry pay packets – despite a rise in the number of independent businesses.

29,000 was this year’s UK average salary, which is the exact same number as last year, and broadly in line with the previous two (2014: 30,400 2013: 29,600)

Over 1,000 people filled in our latest survey (more than 650 from the UK), making it the most successful salary survey so far. Men were the highest earners, with 30,000, versus women who generated 26,500. However, it’s important to note the large disparity between female and male respondents, which means those numbers are not as comparable as they may appear.

One of the interesting elements of this year’s survey was the disparity between pay within certain roles – there was a rise in smaller businesses, particularly within publishing, development and media, with staff earning a little lower (most of the time), than those in similar positions at larger institutions.

As well as questions about pay, we asked the global games industry to discuss how they feel about working in the market. Although respondents lamented the lack of bonuses and schemes, bemoaned the long hours, and complained about the absence of overtime pay, they do enjoy working within the industry. Just 9.2 per cent of those surveyed said they expected to leave the games industry over the next five years, with only two per cent saying they will ‘definitely’ be leaving within that time.

Meanwhile, 76.7 per cent of respondants are confident about their job security.

HOW DID WE DO IT?

We surveyed the global games industry from mid-December until the end of January. When working out averages, we removed part-time workers and those with extremely high pay. We used median averages (opposed to mean) so that the average is not skewed by those paid on the extreme ends of the scale.

OTHER SECTORS

Due to limited replies from support sectors, we could not split these by job titles. But broadly, recruitment staff make 22,000, outsource QA and localisation workers took home 19,500, analysts make 36,500, while PR agency staff are paid 36,000.