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by quasiuna 3425 days ago
The only industry paying developers this much is the game industry. It's not uncommon for AAA game developers (e.g. Developers for call of duty, GTA etc.) to have a profit share in their employment contract. When a new game goes live and sells hundreds of millions of copies in a single weekend, the rewards for some developers can be huge.

In a nutshell, learn C++.
6 comments
marclittlemore 3425 days ago
> It's not uncommon for AAA game developers (e.g. Developers for call of duty, GTA etc.) to have a profit share in their employment contract.

While having profit share in a game developer's contract is sometimes true, I'd say that it's definitely not a common occurrence to earn that much money. Profit share is based on royalties made after paying back development costs and the game being extremely successful. Due to rising development costs, and most games not being multi-million sellers, most developers earn minimal bonuses beyond their contractual wages, from my experience of the industry.

I'm based in the UK and wrote console games for 19 years. I'm estimating that I saw around £15k in game related bonuses over that time. I did hear rumours of the Tomb Raider team getting a £40k bonus back in the mid 90s but I'm not sure if that was true.

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trome 3425 days ago
On the flipside, quite a few developers working in that industry are getting paid peanuts since there are so many people looking to work in that industry.
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zump 3425 days ago
Interesting, I've heard the opposite about the game industry. But I suppose you need to join an AAA studio. But it makes sense that a game would live and die by the performance of the rendering engine for example.

EDIT: I heard Valve engineers make serious coin.

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adamnemecek 3425 days ago
This is the first time I'm hearing about the game industry cuts, I've only ever heard that the salaries were lower compared with other programming fields. Does everyone on the team get a cut or only from a certain level of seniority?
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marclittlemore 3425 days ago
From my experience, the percentage share of the profit was normally based on time at the company and seniority of role. It was normally given to everyone who worked in the team but as I said in another comment, actually seeing a large profit related bonus was rare.
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quasiuna 3425 days ago
You can see the kinds of bonuses involved with big game launches with all of the legal action around call of duty: http://m.uk.ign.com/articles/2012/05/23/call-of-duty-devs-ne...
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vostok 3425 days ago
I've heard this as well. Didn't Chris Sawyer make $30 million from the RollerCoaster Tycoon?
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