What’s The Regular Video Game Tester Salary?

Being a professional video game tester is patently great. You get to play the most recent video games and you are paid to do so. Truthfully, what more could any gamer ask for? However, the actual question is : how much does a video game tester get paid? After all , if the pay isn’t any good, why would someone continue in that kind of work?

The average video game tester salary can go from 15-20 thousand bucks a year all the way up to 80-100+ thousand per year. How much a game tester makes is directly related to how many roles he gets as well as what developers hire him. But since most game testers work on a job by job basis and not on a contractual salary, let’s break down the annual figure into an hourly and a weekly figure.

Game testers are often paid $8-20 an hour, dependent on their level of experience. For this example, let us take the middle ground and go with $15 per hour for a mid-level tester. Game testers have a tendency to put in lots of hours each week ( 40 to 50+ ), which is usually because of a developer’s inflexible deadlines.

With that having been said, let’s assume the tester works the sometimes minimum ( 40 hours ) and is paid the previously mentioned $15 per hour of testing work. 40 hours x $15 is a once-per-week check of $600 dollars, assuming the tester were to work that many hours each week. Sounds a bit like a nice check, right? You bet it does, and most gamers would be excited to cash a check like that each week.

The big downside to being a video game tester, as mentioned above, is that your career moves forward on a per job basis. You won’t get a testing job each month, nor are you going to get one every week. As an important point, it is fairly common to have a long wait between many of your testing roles. So, unless you are at the very top of your game and tons of game developers know of you, be prepared to wait in line like all the rest. Happily for you though, there’s a way to increase the quantity of job openings that are available to you, and it’s known as networking.

Learn more about Game Tester Career Path and How To Become A Game Tester today.