How magical can the income gap in the gaming industry be?

Standing in heaven looking at hell, life feels like a sitcom; standing in hell looking at heaven, you wonder for whom you are struggling, for whom you are busy. Speaking of the income gap in the gaming industry, it creates a sense of magic.

People outside the industry might look and think, "Wow, is it true that salaries in the internet industry are in the millions?" Later, through tears, they come to realise that the world is just a giant comment section, like Little Red Book.

But even with survivor bias, it’s hard to deny that this magical gap truly exists. For instance, I’ve heard someone say that at a top-tier company, the business head’s annual income before tax is usually around 5 million RMB. But another business head at the same level makes as much as 15 million RMB, far surpassing the others.

After learning this number, many middle managers were shaken, because they generally didn’t recognise his business abilities and felt that he mainly relied on upward management. Some even sighed, saying, "No matter how hard some people try, they can only make a modest income, while others can easily earn a lifetime’s worth in one year."

But that’s not even the most exaggerated case. A former general manager from a large company stated that at many major firms, reaching the General Manager (GM) level typically results in an annual salary of 2 to 3 million RMB, which is considered relatively low.

Forget whether such high salaries are expensive or not; in the gaming industry, many company owners might even be eager for more high-salary talent to boost the team’s talent density. One boss even told me that their team’s average salary last year was 500,000 RMB, and to recruit more talented people, they raised it to over 800,000 RMB this year. Team members with a salary of around a million make up about 20% of the team, which is a relatively high number for non-top-tier, non-major projects.

However, for research and development, a high salary for a project leader doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all good news. Here’s a common situation: a project leader with a salary of several million RMB, as long as the company doesn’t put pressure on them, will have the team working on the project without launching it; if the company pressures them, they’ll say there are still some issues with testing, and by tweaking the data, they could make it better, dragging it out forever. With a high "dead salary," they’re content, so why bother?

Even if the team works diligently, excessively high wages can also lead upper management to view the team’s costs as too high. For example, a significant project with a good world view and art, but a niche gameplay orientation, had its project leader’s salary possibly approaching 5 million RMB, according to estimates from colleagues at the same level, based on their positions. I’m not sure if it’s due to cost concerns, but the company later cancelled the project.

In the end, while high salaries may make people envious, it’s the high salaries of people who don’t deserve them that really feel magical. A friend who has worked for many years in big companies complained that the current situation is like this:

1. Your income doesn’t reflect your ability.
2. If you believe that your ability is related to your position, you’ve already fallen into the trap of meritocracy.
3. With the same ability, the impact of education, company background, and project experience on salary can be multiplied by up to three times.

So, aside from exceptional cases, is the income gap in the gaming industry really magical? For ordinary workers, the answer is still yes. Here are a few easily imagined examples:

1. Those working on the most top-tier projects: As early as 2021, a report was published about a Tencent Tianmei L1 studio client developer with 12 years of experience earning 2.51 million RMB in annual income after tax, or approximately 210,000 RMB per month after tax.

This matter made its way to the trending topics on Maima and Zhihu, and some people even lamented that they, as former prominent company executives, didn’t earn as much as a "regular Tencent employee." Please don’t take it too seriously, after all, it’s a rare project, and such salaries and bonuses are astonishing but not surprising. Everyone knows of similar stories, such as the 190 million RMB bonus for Lilith’s AFK team in 2021 (and they said the cumulative bonus had already reached 325 million RMB two years ago, and we don’t know the current figure); or the principal planner of "Yi Nian Xiao Yao" in 2022 being gifted a house in Shenzhen's Overseas Chinese Town, worth at least 10 million RMB based on that year’s property prices.

1. Some company GMs or senior executives, with basic annual salaries in the millions, often see their total yearly income reach tens of millions, or even over a hundred million, when factoring in project bonuses, stock options, and other rewards. This probably represents the pinnacle of "working people."
2. Outside the realm of employees, more extreme cases are the chairpersons of listed gaming companies. Their base salaries can range from nearly a million to tens of millions, and when you add stock options, their total annual income can reach billions.

The logic behind this is that, as decision-makers, resource pullers, and people taking responsibility, senior executives and owners are often entitled to a share of the company's excess profits. The risks they took earlier are also a vast difference between working and entrepreneurship.

1. The most extreme cases, which are hard to envy, are those who quit their jobs or dropped out to pursue their passion for indie games, and somehow became the chosen ones who achieved financial freedom. Further examples include Notch selling "Minecraft" for $ 2.5 billion USD. More recent examples include LocalThunk, who earned tens of millions of dollars from his TGA-nominated game "Joker Cards" and then announced he was stopping updates to "retire."

LocalThunk’s previous announcement: "Sorry, I can’t update anymore."

Oh, and there’s one more type, though the numbers aren’t exaggerated. Still, they are highly damaging and insulting—those exceptional new graduates who get hired with salaries higher than what you would earn after five or six years of work experience...

It’s baffling how the gap can be so wide for people doing the same job. This is an unsolvable problem—it may be related to personal effort, but more importantly, it is closely tied to the era’s trends, the track you choose, the opportunities provided by platforms, and even pure luck.

The industry is full of legendary stories, and there are always people who rise to the top with ease. This naturally makes the silent majority, standing halfway up the mountain, sigh and feel anxious. Not just in the gaming industry, but the magical nature of reality has always been the norm.