Spiludvikling.dk

Hep,
I am sure that his have been discussed to death already, but had a peak at "IT Branchen's" most recent salary statistics, and their numbers mentioned that salaries for game developers on average were 54.740,00 a month.

But can anyone tell me what the real averages are in DK?

I am especially looking for salaries for these base roles:
3D Artist (Asset / Environment / Character)
Texture Artist
Game developer (Unity/Cry/Unreal)
Animator
Producer (PM)
Senior Leads

As far as I can understand then nobody have any numbers and not even Danmarks Statistik are able to provide numbers.

I am also interested to know if people generally work on a fixed(perm) contract, or are working on a contract that "just" covers a title or a specific period of time.

If any business owners are reading this and don't want to provide them in public then PM me if you are open to discuss salary levels face to face as I am VERY interested to know what kind of numbers that you need to operate with to run a somewhat solid company in DK compared to elsewhere.

54.740 sounds more like a veteran software developer with 10-20 years of experience than an industry average.

But of course, I have not worked in Denmark for 5 years and was never employed in the gaming industry, so, FWIW.

I agree with that, and suspected that "IT Branchen"'s numbers only included obscure salary data from IO, and wondered why they ended up with data that indicated that Game Developers would get that type of salaries on average.

Last time I worked in DK then overall SW dev salaries were much lower than that (even roles that demanded high level math, 3D skills and Danish language skills), but who knows what have happened in the last 10 years.

54.740,00 is much too high a number. Even for people with many years of experience. There are, of course, a few CEOs and key personnel who do earn such a high number, but it is certainly not the average.

For programmers / game developers, the salaries are slightly lower than in the rest of the IT industry (because the job is slightly more fun.) Senior/lead developers also earn slightly less than leads elsewhere. So just look up the numbers for programmers in general and subtract... maybe 10 to 20%...

Last time I checked (not recently, admittedly), animators and artists had slightly lower salaries than programmers. I am not sure a meaningful average can be calculated for producers, since the responsibilities of such a role vary and depend on the size of the company.

The salaries vary a great deal in the game industry. Small and newly started companies tend to pay a lot less than bigger and more established ones.
Salaries of zero are uncommon, but not unheard of. Some people are willing to work for free just to break into the industry.

I think unpaid work is not the way to go. unless you offer equity or other means of incentives, but honestly some kind of salary is usually more "honest" and liveable. Anyway more interested in what the current "established" in DK are paying just to compare.

Me and a mate have been thinking of returning home to DK and start a co up, but when doing an operating budget that we can work out from, then we need to know what people generally accept as an "acceptable" salary or what is the industry average. Other expenses are easy to get but salary data is quite difficult to obtain I feel.

So I wonder if 20K, 25K a month is fine enough for the first year(s), or if we need to get up to 30K or more?

For 20 to 30K you should be able to hire some inexperienced people who just finished their education.
My first salary as a game programmer fresh out of university nine years ago was 27K.

No clue where they get the 54k from as average. I would have guessed somewhere between 30 and 40k as average.

The number were what were published in IT Branchen salary survey.

The consultant that I later spoke with there called game development a specialised role that in DK demanded a higher salary on average....But my guess is that they only included IO in the survey and not any of the smaller Co's

Anyway my question is then if very low 30's including everything for devs with 3-4years experience would be completely insane to offer in Denmark?

You would probably not find many people with 3-4 years of professional game development in established companies for that salary.
It's low-end for software development - but you might be able to attract some talented people with a few years of professional experience in general software development willing to make the sacrifice to get a chance to get into the game development business.
But it would probably be a good piece of advice to give handsome raises after a couple of years if you want them to stick around...

Thanks for the feedback from you all, but sounds like it would be easier to just get the coding done out of Denmark.

I feel that the problem with budgeting expenses for a co/branch office in DK is that base salaries are so damn high compared to literally anywhere else on the planet. I mean 360000 DKK (roughly 80000 CAD/44000 GBP/6250000 JPY/77000 SGD) is literally an early senior dev salary in UK and CA, where as in JP, AU and SG then it is past what an average senior dev with 3D experience would get as an entry pay.

Anyway it gave me something to consider about.

Salaries in Denmark are indeed among the highest in Europe. If you're able and willing to relocate to another country to set up shop then Denmark would probably not be the first choice...
But I would personally want to be physically present at the core development site.
If I were to start a game development company in Denmark I would probably keep most of the coding inside the country, while considering outsourcing 2D and 3D art, animation, music etc. For a larger project I would prefer at least 1 art lead inhouse.
I would prefer working with an office/company inside the EU - perhaps Poland because salaries are quite low there, and it's quite cheap and fast to get there. I think (young) people are also pretty proficient in English and corruption is low compared to other low salary countries.

You could try and contact Spilordningen (The National Danish Game Funding Scheme). They may have some guidelines for salaries when evaluating the budgets for incoming applications for projects.

http://www.dfi.dk/branche_og_stoette/spilordningen.aspx

@Jesper
We (me and my partners) are moving back to Denmark because our kids. That's the main reason for returning to Denmark and why Denmark is on the table as a studio or production office.

From experience I only know Singapore, Japan, Shanghai and Taiwan and not that experienced with the industry in Europe - well, besides Spain and UK that is, but zip and zero when it comes to Poland or the rest of eastern Europe.


@Vanulla_Ace
Spilordningen is not really on the table as we aren't really looking for public funding to begin with, but it could of course be that they have numbers for salaries? Good idea.

I have been around Producent Foreningen and Interactive Denmark, who could not give any information about salary levels in Denmark. Producent Foreningen is btw absolutely not interested in the danish game industry at all - or that's the impression that i got when speaking to them.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do:) I'm sure it would be a lot easier cooperating with an asian company is a whole lot easier if you're already familiar with the culture there, and the salary is definitely much smaller in China and Taiwan - not sure about Japan and Singapore, but I would think a Singapore based business might be a little easier to work with?

If by "Denmark" you mean "Copenhagen", you could also consider Sweden/Malmö - it's near enough that transport isn't a major issue, culturally identical and lots of GameDev talent around (I was going to say something about the Swedish vs. the Danish games industry, but I'm not going down that path ).

Anywho, due to both exchange rates, costs of living and differences in the tax systems, it has historically been much less expensive to hire qualified people in Sweden (I'm not sure what the current difference in salary is, but when I was looking at jobs 5 years ago the difference was ridiculous - so much so that by living in Sweden and working in Denmark, my average Danish developer salary allowed me to drive a Porsche to work... Those were good times ).

Another note, and this is just my personal experience, is that starting and running a company is less of a hassle in Sweden - it's as if the Swedish authorities (unlike their Danish equivalent) have not completely forgotten that they are a service provider