A recent report released by the UK Government relating to the gender pay gap has thrown some light on more prominent sections of the country's video game industry. The Gender Pay Gap database saw several video game companies declare the differences between the salaries of their employees (not only on average but also across the different pay grades). Participation in this initiative is mandatory for companies with more than 250 employees, and those who don't declare this information risk paying particularly high fines, and as such several studios have offered data.
GamesIndustry.biz has calculated that the hourly average for women working in the biggest companies in the United Kingdom is 14.47% lower than it is for men. While depressingly predictable, the database also shows that the wage difference between men and women is even more significant in the gaming industry. The most alarming figure comes from Rockstar, which ranks in first place among companies with regards to wage inequality, where the average wage for a woman is 64% lower than it is for a man. More specifically, this means that women earn 36p for every £1 earned by a man.
While those figures are particularly shocking, other companies certainly have nothing to boast about; the average wage per hour for Sumo Digital's female workers is 34.5% lower than that of their male staff, and at Codemasters women are paid 27.9% less than their male colleagues. Elsewhere women earn 23.3% less at Creative Assembly and Traveler's Tales pay 21.8% less. For more on the matter you can take a look via this link.
In light of this disconcerting revelation, it turns out that 69% of major UK video game companies are above the national average in terms of the difference between men and women and their respective hourly wages. We hope that this embarrassing disparity will quickly begin to shrink and thus allow women working in the industry to have the same pay as their male counterparts.