[ipaddr]

An entry level game developer (1-3 years of experience) earns an average salary of ¥8,386,388. On the other end, a senior level game developer (8+ years of experience) earns an average salary of ¥14,449,841.

Which is 90 to 160 Canadian

[Aeolun]

This seems absurdly high. I barely see people making those kinds of salaries in large foreign companies.

Anecdotally, my friend earned something like 5M yen and was working 10-12 hour days including Saturday at entry/mid level.

[dmak]

¥8M is common now and I know plenty of people with salaries going for over ¥10M, but very few go over ¥20M and even less for ¥30M.

I would suggest you to re-evaluate your market opportunities if you are an Engineer getting paid ¥5M in Japan.

[Aeolun]

You must be living in a different world. I know exactly zero people with a salary over 20M, other than maybe the CIO, and probably because he migrated from the US and kept whatever compensation they gave him there (plus the expat bonus).

My starting salary was 2.1M yen in Japan, and until my current position never breached 5.5M

[dmak]

You might be grossly underpaid depending on your current skillsets and geographic location. What kind of work are you doing now? also, how many years have you been working? If you are in Tokyo and you are Senior, you should be above ¥8M at least.

Happy to discuss more over chat or something similar. Let me know if you want to compare notes.

[amrocha]

Not at Japanese companies, which is nearly all game developers. The high end of the market at Japanese companies for staff level engineers with 8+ years of experience is 12-14M. 4-5M for entry level is not unusual

[ipaddr]

https://www.salaryexpert.com/salary/job/game-developer/japan....

[diceduckmonk]

I think you've prematurely dropped-the-mic. Linking a URL doesn't legitimize your claim.

I've worked extensively with the best salary datasets available. Even then, you shouldn't believe everything you read. Even when the data is good, it's not reality. I fail to believe SalaryExperts are anywhere near experts in this case when there is so many odd points on that page.

For starters, it's kind of weird to fix game dev salaries on Tokyo when the Kyoto Triangle is a thing. I have on-the-ground context on Japan because I can see the Nintendo office from my backyard. People who aren't familiar with Japan don't realize that Tokyo city doesn't even exist or at least stopped existing over a century ago. That's just a litmus test as to why you trust the anecdotal evidence of people who actually live and work in Japan over a cherrypicked website from Google search for "game dev salary Japan".

[Danieru]

That data is pure fantasy.