From November 2022 to October 2026, salaries in the gaming industry have decreased on average by 13%. This conclusion was reached by Amir Satvat, a partner at the venture fund 1Up Ventures.
According to his calculations, taking into account inflation in the U.S., the purchasing power of salaries over the past four years has decreased by approximately 23%.
At the same time, employers have become more demanding regarding candidate experience without offering corresponding salary increases: today, companies hire specialists for comparable positions who have, on average, three more years of experience than before but pay them roughly the same.
In the analyst's opinion, the real deterioration in developers’ financial situations could be even more significant. This is especially true for professionals forced to live in expensive gaming hubs in North America, where more than 75% of the region's open vacancies are concentrated.
Satvat specifically noted that his data does not allow for determining the impact of artificial intelligence development on the decline in salaries.