IbizaPocholo
NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
Bandai Namco Announces Significant Pay Raise For Developers
Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco has announced a pay raise for its developers, and the starting salary is going up as well.
techraptor.net
Bandai Namco has announced it will be raising its base developer pay rate in April. Employees will get a raise of more than $5k per annum, with the starting salary also increasing significantly for graduates and entry-level employees.
According to a Bandai Namco press release (for which we're using reporting by Automaton Media alongside machine translation), Bandai Namco is raising basic salary for employees by around 50,000 yen per month, which works out at around $5,000 per year. In addition, the starting salary is increasing from 232,000 yen (around $2000) to 290,000 yen (about $2500). The press release says this is in line with Bandai Namco's new "connect with fans" mission, part of which involves promoting "diverse human resources in various fields". Studio pay is becoming more of a hot topic, as publishers and developers like Team17 contend with staff alleging awful pay and bad working conditions.
As well as raising base pay, Bandai Namco says it's also allowing employees to choose where and when they work "according to their purpose" (again, we're using machine translation here). There are, however, a few unknowns at play. Notably, Bandai Namco's press release doesn't make any mention of international employees; the amounts are all in yen, and any reference to non-Japanese employees is absent from the text. Of course, Japanese employees aren't named specifically, and mentions of "diverse human resources" and connecting with gamers "around the world" could suggest a global policy shift for Bandai Namco. We've contacted the studio for comment and clarification on this.
