The game industry has been a slow adapter to remote work, generally pushing to have all employees in the same place to boost creativity and protect their game secrets. COVID-19 have pushed the biggest studios out of their comfort zone, as they all shifted to remote work. And remarkably, 2020 has been a year for some of the biggest game releases ever, including The Last of Us 2, HADES, Ghost of Tsushima and others. So remote work definitely works. Some studios realized it's actually better, some are going fully remote, others are doing hybrid (check out remote esports jobs here). But some studios can't wait to get back to physical work.
So as the news of COVID-19 vaccine success rates surfaced last month, I thought it would be a good exercise to go through the stats of jobs posted on Remote Game Jobs, and see how many of these jobs are Fully Remote, and how many are COVID-19. The site has only been live since April this year, so unfortunately I do not have long historical data to compare to the time before the virus.
Still I was impressed to know that 88.6% of the jobs were Fully Remote. Meaning they don't require physical relocation in the future.
Great share Bashar. Quite refreshing to know that a huge chunk of jobs are fully remote. Do you also plan to further split the data & share stats? For e.g. would be interesting to know which geographies have the highest fully remote jobs or which ones have geographical restrictions (my guess would be countries/regions that have lower pay since they won't be able to match pay in countries like the US).
Cathy T
Remote Work Experience
I work as a freelance writer and digital marketer. Have been doing this remotely for 2 years now.
That's a good idea Cathy, I will look into it. Not sure if I have enough data yet to build a good report for this, but it's worth a look. I don't have many job ads from lower pay countries yet, but the restrictions I can recall are from Canada, due to work visa, US very often due to time constraint. Europe could ask for Europeans as it's far easier to handle legally, and some UK studios had received funding that requires hiring from UK only.
That's just from top of my head.
Bashar Abdullah
Remote Work Experience
I started working on my side hustle back in late 2006. 2007 I tried my first remote hiring for freelance design job. From there, I kept on hiring remote talents for all kinds of work. Programming, writing, marketing, design, and anything else. I quit my day job, and have been working from home on my own projects since 2009, over 10 years now.
Oh wow, that's awesome! I was particularly fascinated by Miles Morales this year. Studios are no longer necessary, as game development can be done remotely. But, they should set proper collaboration and communication channels to prevent another Cyberpunk 2077.
Lucas Wagner
Remote Work Experience
Yes, ~3 years as a designer.
Haven't played that yet. Cyberpunk 2077 is a mixed bag of issues. CD Projekt Red is known for their work crunch, and overly ambitious projects. Adding remote work in the middle of a pandemic to the mix surely complicated things more, but I wouldn't blame it all on that. 2020 had many amazing games come out, like The Last of Us 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Hades, and AC Valhalla. Granted Valhalla had PC issues, but the launch was far better than Cyberpunk.
Bashar Abdullah
Remote Work Experience
I started working on my side hustle back in late 2006. 2007 I tried my first remote hiring for freelance design job. From there, I kept on hiring remote talents for all kinds of work. Programming, writing, marketing, design, and anything else. I quit my day job, and have been working from home on my own projects since 2009, over 10 years now.