Raising salary in the game industry… Fighting for talent

▲ Nexon office ⓒ Nexon

Korean game companies that benefited from the aftermath of the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19) last year have stepped up to raise their salaries. It is interpreted as a plan to prevent employees from leaving and secure promising personnel.

According to related industries on the 9th, major domestic game companies such as Nexon, Netmarble, Gameville, Com2uS, and Smilegate have decided to increase their annual salaries to double digits this year.

Nexon was the first Korean game company to achieve annual sales of 3 trillion won last year, and its operating profit also recorded 1.19 trillion won (111.5 billion yen), an 18% increase over the previous year. Accordingly, it was decided to increase the annual salary of all employees by 8 million won, and the annual salary for new employees was set at 50 million won.

During the same period, Netmarble also recorded a sales of 2.4884 trillion won and an operating profit of 272 billion won, up 14% and 34.2% year-on-year, respectively. We decided to raise the annual salary for all employees (8 million won) and the annual salary for new employees (50 million won) to the same level as Nexon.

Gameville, Com2uS, and Smilegate also promised an annual salary increase of 8 million won to all employees. In the case of Krafton sitting on a money cushion at the battle ground, it was decided to increase the annual salary of 20 million won for the developer and 15 million won for non-development workers. Small and medium-sized game companies Joy City (10 million won) and Vespa (12 million won) have also promised a huge annual salary increase.

As such, it is interpreted that the background of game companies’ unprecedented wage hike dominoes is to prevent manpower from leaving. It is interpreted that Naver and Kakao, which have achieved the highest performance, are conscious of the complaints of employees in performance pay and personnel evaluation. At the same time, it is interpreted as sending a love call with welfare benefits including annual salary to recruit excellent developers.

An industry insider predicted that “the recent MZ generation as the main axis, the voices demanding fair evaluation and results from the management are increasing.”

On the other hand, NCsoft, which is ranked as 3N after Nexon and Netmarble, plans to pay individual incentives to each employee by this month, and to complete the annual salary setting. NCsoft’s sales increased by 42% from the previous year to 2,426.2 billion won last year, and its operating profit increased by 72% to 8248 billion won.