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Logo of Riot Games: The game company is behind the popular online game »League of Legends«
Photo: CHRIS DELMAS / AFP
The question of how exactly wages are in the tech and games industry is not that easy to answer.
The employees themselves are most likely to provide more detailed insights if they provide an insight into their earnings on social networks, for example using the Twitter hashtag #gamedevpaidme .
In Germany, too, there are few digital companies that make it clear to potential applicants from the outset what they can expect on the payslip.
One of the few pioneers in this area is the Hamburg games manufacturer InnoGames, which published its salary bands last July (more on this here).
A little more transparency is now also foreseeable in California, where many well-known tech companies are based.
Since the turn of the year, companies with at least 15 employees have also had to provide information on the expected basic salary in job advertisements.
That's earned at Riot Games and at Treyarch
Gaming industry expert Jason Schreier checked what the new regulation means in practice on New Year's Day.
He posted excerpts of current job advertisements from his department on Twitter, which made one thing clear above all: a lot remains vague.
Because the big companies do give specific salary figures for each position, but in some cases they go very far – which probably only simplifies the negotiation a bit.
Two examples: If you want to create special effects for the online game »League of Legends« as a senior VFX artist at Riot Games, you can earn between 123,000 and 171,000 dollars a year in Los Angeles.
Then there are performance-related payments and other extras.
And if you want to become a senior level designer with the "Call of Duty" developer Treyarch, with a focus on Zombies level, base salaries between 80,800 and 149,400 dollars are possible.
The actual amount of the salary depends on experience, performance and location, it says.
Even with the Treyarch position, you can top up your salary with performance bonuses.
If you want to find out more about the earning potential at the game companies, you can find additional job advertisements online, including salary ranges, here at Riot Games and here at Treyarch.
It is noticeable that the salaries actually only appear at the end of the advertisements for jobs in California.
For example, Riot Games makes no such statement about a position in Berlin.
(Read more about jobs in the German games industry here.)
The tech companies pay such salaries
In addition to game developers, the new requirement affects tech companies such as Twitter and Meta.
For example, Elon Musk's short message service is on the lookout - albeit not for the moment - for a senior privacy engineer for topics such as privacy and data protection.
The base salary for this position in San Francisco is between $162,000 and $226,000.
For example, Meta is looking for a Product Manager for its Menlo Park headquarters, with an annual base salary of $197,000 to $270,000.
For comparison: At TikTok, the annual base salary for a product manager in Los Angeles is between $124,640 and $261,744.
The short video service, on the other hand, prefers not to reveal what salary people who are supposed to check on things from Berlin as content moderators in the field of live streams can expect.
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