Game Companies in Several US States Are Now Required to Include Pay Ranges in Job Postings

Starting January 1, 2023, new pay transparency laws that require companies from a number of areas, including the gaming industry, to reveal salary ranges in their job listings came into effect in Washington and California. Prior to this, on November 1, 2022, a similar law came into force in New York.

The three laws slightly differ in their wording. For example, in New York, companies are expected to provide a "good faith salary range", while companies whose offices are located in Washington must state the opening wage scale or salary range as well as a general description of all benefits and other compensation offered.

California-based companies, which include Activision Blizzard and Riot Games, meanwhile, are required to post "the salary or hourly wage range that the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position."

While the intention of the laws is quite decent, the initiative has had a bumpy start as the laws' vague wordings caused some companies to post unhelpfully wide ranges.

For example, a job opening for a graphics engineer at a Netflix game studio lists a range between $50,000 and $600,000 per year, and a job description of a senior software engineer at Microsoft-owned Mojang Studios, the developer of Minecraft, states that this specialist is expected to get between $145,800 and $238,600 per year. Both companies cite the "base pay range" or "overall market range" in California and Washington.

For a potential employee, however, the difference between the minimum and the maximum salary posted by the companies can be critical, especially if a person has to move to a different region for work. In addition, a wave of criticism mounted on some companies whose job postings revealed that some of the specialists, especially, QA workers, are offered quite low pay.

For instance, a job opening for a test lead on Diablo IV at Blizzard states that this specialist will be able to get between $49,600.00 and $91,760.00 per year. Again, the company states that this is "the standard base pay range for this role" in the US.

At the same time, a QA Engineer II at Riot Games (a role equivalent to a test lead) is offered to get between $98,000 and $138,000 per year. It's worth noting that Riot explicitly states that the salary range is specified particularly for this role, unlike Blizzard which cites a base pay range in the US. In addition, even the minimum salary for a QA Engineer II role at Riot is almost $50,000 higher than what Blizzard offers for a similar role.

Apart from Blizzard, other ABK studios were also criticized for low pay. For instance, a Tester I at Activision is only offered to get between $23,000 and $43,000 per year, which is less than a living wage for a single person in California with no children.

However, there are examples of a fair pay range, apart from Riot, among the gaming companies as well. For example, Destiny developer Bungie is ready to pay its test leads between $86,000 and $108,000 per year.