Brightmine: UK games industry's gender pay gap is 17.1%

The average basic salary in the UK games industry is over £8,000 higher for men than it is for women.

That's according to the latest data from Brightmine, which produces salary benchmarking for video games companies. The data is based on more than 25 games businesses, and covers over 3,000 games employees.

The male basic salary is £49,695, while the female basic salary is £41,174. That gives the UK games industry a pay gap figure of 17.1%. This is higher than the 14.7% average for all industries, but lower than the 25.8% gap for the technology industry. These figures are all based on Brightmine data.

The Brightmine salary benchmarking project is underway for 2024, and UK games companies are invited to join the project through here. The project is in partnership with GamesIndustry.biz

The Bightmine data for last year shows that women are most heavily represented in studio support (98% of individuals are female); general management (77%), and information and advice (62%). Men are most heavily represented in games art (97% of individuals are men); marketing (97%); and games QA (96%).

Brightmine is the new name of XpertHR, which is a well-established benchmarking service that is adopted by many other industries. It launched a pilot programme with GamesIndustry.biz last year, revealing incites into pay scales across the sector. The project is designed to help companies pay their teams fairly and retain talent.

The 2024 programme is live now and runs until the end of July. All data is confidential and anonymised, so nothing can be traced to your company or any individual.

It's free to take part and all participants will receive a basic report. More advanced reporting and database access is available for a fee.

You can register your interest here.

If you have any questions about data participation or are interested in connecting, email Rachel.Sunderland@brightmine.com or Jennie.jakubowski@brightmine.com