What is the Average Video Game Tester Salary?

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Being a professional video game tester is obviously great. You get to play the newest video games and you get paid to do so. Honestly, what more could any gamer ask for? However, the big questions is: how much does a video game tester get paid? After all, if the pay isn't any good, why would a person continue in that line of work?

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

Game testers are typically paid $8-20 per hour, depending on their level of experience. For this example, let's take the middle ground and go with $15 per hour for a mid-level tester. Game testers tend to put in a lot of hours each week (40 to 50+), which is usually due to a developer's inflexible deadlines. With that being said, let's say the tester works the typically minimum (40 hours) and is paid the aforementioned $15 per hour of testing work. 40 hours x $15 is a weekly paycheck of $600 dollars, assuming the tester were to work that many hours each week. Sounds like a nice paycheck, right? You bet it does, and most gamers would be thrilled to cash a check like that every week.

The big downside to being a video game tester, as mentioned above, is that your career progresses on a per job basis. You won't get a testing job every month, nor will you get one every week. As a matter of fact, it is fairly common to have a long wait in between many of your testing jobs. So, unless you are at the top of your game and tons of game developers know of you, be prepared to wait in line like all the rest. Fortunately for you though, there is a way to increase the amount of job openings that are available to you, and it's known as networking. To read an article about video game tester networking, click here

Does a career as a professional video game tester peek your interest? Well, it should. Game testing is a great job and anyone who does it will say the same thing. The few drawbacks that come with video game testing don't even come close to making it an "iffy" decision, and that's simply because this career is genuinely fun!