Square Enix Employees Make Major Dough

[Tom Goldman]

Square Enix Employees Make Major Dough

If you like money, the best place to work in Japan is Square Enix.

What do you get when the studios that develop the world's most popular JRPGs merge? A company that pays its employees the most out of any Japanese employer, according to new research that names Square Enix employees as the best paid in Japan.

Though both companies developed multiple game series, Square Co. was known for Final Fantasy and Enix was known for Dragon Quest, two of the world's best-selling RPGs. They merged in 2003 to form Square Enix.

According to Tokyo Shoko Research [http://blog.esuteru.com/archives/679187.html], Square Enix employees are now paid an average of 17.9 million yen per year. That's $208,000, €159,000, £132,000, ₩243,000,000, or ₪785,000.

These Square Enix employees are fairly young too, with an average age of 41.2 years old. That's 22 in Mars years, 1.4 in Saturn years, and 171 in Mercury years.

With over 3,000 employees, that's a lot of happy people, but this figure does only refer to an average without a specific salary breakdown. The top guys could be getting mega-salaries while the lowly Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within [http://www.amazon.com/Final-Fantasy-XIII-Playstation-3/dp/B000FQ2DTA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1281450307&sr=8-1] and Cloud bobbleheads.

Source: Japanator [http://www.japanator.com/square-enix-employees-are-making-the-big-bucks-16076.phtml]

Permalink

 

[wooty]

Hmmmm, interesting. So how does one get employed by Sqeenix? I would like to know

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

That's not just VIDEO GAME employers. That's all employers in Japan, PERIOD.

Holy fuck.

Anyway, nice "Morale" picture. I see the little meter in the corner! I'm assuming morale is high at SE, too.

 

[Mana Fiend]

Holy zombie Jesus! I want me some of that mollah. I'm sure one could bluff me way through the interview process too, provided no FFVII remakes are mentioned too.

Now, where's that Japanese newspaper jobs page gone...

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Its a shame the games made by them are not as good as their salaries/profits....

 

[Raptor Defence Engineer]

"lowly developers"? DQ9 is a great game Return to traditional RPG style. I thoroughly enjoyed it and i'm still playing it, 50 hrs + and counting.

 

[Andronicus]

In case anybody's wondering, that's $230,000 in Australian dollars.

What? One of the Escapist's star reviewers lives in Australia. Our currency must be important too...

 

[oktalist]

The mean average doesn't tell us much. A mean of £132,000 could be as a result of the top 10% of employees each making $1,000,000 and the remaining 90% making £35,000 each (still well above the modal average for the industry). I wish people would include a standard deviation when they publish statistics like this.

There is so much misinformation about game industry salaries around at the moment. Like that article from Maxim (you know that magazine specialises in scantily-clad women, right?) that was posted here a couple of months back, that claimed game programmers average $90,000 in the US. The reality is that the games industry is the among the poorest paid of the IT sector. To me it looks like publishers pointing the blame for inflated prices at "greedy developers," when in fact the finger-pointing should be the other way around.

And 41 is not young compared to most people working in the industry. LinkedIn uses the median average, rather than the mean, and gives the average age for Square Enix employees as 31. And also that the average employee stays with the company for just two years (normal practice for games companies being to hire graduates and let them go when they start asking for more money, then hire more graduates).

I guess some of these discrepancies can be explained due to Square being a publisher as well as a developer. Publishers are in the marketing business, not the games business, so inflated salaries are to be expected.

 

[oktalist]

"lowly developers"? DQ9 is a great game

"Lowly" in the eyes of the company executives.

 

[OmegaXzors]

Hmmmm, interesting. So how does one get employed by Sqeenix? I would like to know

Be Japanese, spy on young women, and draw characters with horrific bed hair.

 

[wooty]

Hmmmm, interesting. So how does one get employed by Sqeenix? I would like to know

Be Japanese, spy on young women, and draw characters with horrific bed hair.

Damn, I'm two-thirds of the way there, I just need to get Japanese citizenship.

 

[Jared]

Now THATS a firm I wouldnt mind working for! They do ean the cash though! I wouldnt mind getting in that crowd!

 

[Tom Goldman]

"lowly developers"? DQ9 is a great game Return to traditional RPG style. I thoroughly enjoyed it and i'm still playing it, 50 hrs + and counting.

It was just sarcasm... as if the top CEOs are getting rich while giving the people doing the real work nothing.

 

[Kinguendo]

If I got given The Spirits Within for any reason I would be so pissed off. Them's fightin' words!

However the person could make it up to me by giving me FF7 and 10... and 2... and 3... and 4... and come to think of it I wouldnt mind 11 either provided they offered me a pre-paid subscription to test it out. What were we talking about?

 

[Logic 0]

I think I foud my dream job now to only get to japan.

 

[Funkiest Monkey]

Square employees have mega-bucks? Awesome. I wanna work there.