I have been testing the game 18 years, so back date a check and send it C/o Biggermusic, New Jersey, OU812
I remember those days when buying a pack of hot dogs and a loaf of bread was grocery shopping. But I was still a college student and only worked part-time.
The post is legit, though. There is no provocative color-commentary that would lead the responses.
A lot of jobs where you test software or websites are even lower, $16 an hour is like twice as much as others offer.
Some even pay only if you find bugs, just think about that for a second… While Blizzard got a lot of hate lately for their treatment of members and employee´s, I do think that they create opportunities, just like Amazon does.
Yes, you may start very much on the lowest level, but you can work your way up, which at least I believe is a compromise to the low payment you start with.
That being said, the truth is, our society is build on cheap labour, be it the food / restaurant industry, software & website design, clothing & cleaning… Ask yourself this, are you willing to pay $30 each month for WOW?
Are you willing to pay $15 for a hamburger, willing to pay $50 for the cinema, $25000 for a poor seat at the Superbowl?
Video games have not increased much in 20 years if we talk sub money, we may therefore be as guilty for the low income as the company itself.
I mean i get paid the same to be a fire alarm and security technician lol no ome gets paidnwhat they should and the uppers get paid too much. Welcome to life
List of states where you can live independently off $16:
Technically we almost should be because of inflation.
I don’t think rising labor costs will increase the sub price, or Blizzard would have done that by now.
In Seattle minimum wage went up to like $20 an hour. Price of a burger went up by like 25 cents.
So yeah I don’t mind paying an extra quarter or two for workers to have better QoL.
So poor people shouldn’t be able to eat healthy? 
Sounds like a miserable diet that’ll land you an early grave.
By all means, lick those capitalist boots some more Zuma.
I live in the area. I don’t order delivery very often, but the meals i make myself are fairly basic. 4lb of chicken thigh is about $20 (lasts about 5 days), which is about $120 per month (rotating between chicken and fish). Some potatoes, rice and pasta. And frozen veggies, with some fresh fruit as midday snacks. I’m still spending about $200 per month before treating myself to the occasional ribeye or sushi dinner.
Though delicious, I can’t live of cheese quesadillas forever. (I’d need about 6 per day, which is like $4 of a decent shredded cheese per day, but nutrition is the issue). (Exercising requires a good diet, you get better workouts and better results with higher quality food. Empty carbs are super cheap, but ultimately they can’t be the staple in your diet.)
And FWIW, I can lower my costs even more, but at that point I’m sacrificing nutrition. Rice, egg, and soy sauce just isn’t enough for me personally. A meal of chicken & rice with broccoli and cauliflower, homecooked, still costs about $2-3 in ingredients (2 meals a day is still ~$150 per month). Add in snacks, lets say you eat 2 apples per day as a snack, that’s about $1. So, another $30. And that’s about as low as you can go before you’re making sacrifices instead of compromises.
This isn’t true in practice – players spend more on video games than they did 20 years ago. It’s in microtransactions now. The difference is that the whales are spending a lot more than the basic/F2P player. (Steam summer sales are pretty great though. And localized pricing is great too.) But you’re not wrong, it’s just… more complicated…
Microtransactions may as well be called macrotransactions. And fwiw, there’s nothing wrong with whales helping keep our entertainment costs down. But there’s a severe moral issue in the industry when a game company like ATVI lays off 800 employees while posting record yearly profits, then re-hires the cut jobs at a 30% reduced compensation rate from the previous employees.
I wouldn’t have believed it had I not checked Blizzard’s careers site. Wow. This is embarrassing.
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That salary isnt bad if it wasnt a liberal hell hole inflated massively compare to the rest of the country. 35k in most states for 1 or 2 people is plenty. In california ita not even enough for one and they keep makong it worst by mandating minimum wages, increasing taxes and passing “progressive” policies
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Technically even in california 48k isnt poverty line. 40k is. But in most other places 48k would be plenty especially right out of college.
For most of the country thats way more than just a degree gets you.
So I did a quick google:
As of May 2024, the average rent in Irvine, CA is $2,778 per month. This is 83% higher than the national average rent price of $1,515/month, making Irvine one of the most expensive cities in the US.
That’s more than their starting pay, prior to paying income tax, for rent alone. Much less the fact that QA seems to be the 1st to be laid-off at Blizzard.
I’m so glad that I had no interest in becoming a part of the gaming industry.
People really need to think about this more than they do. At my company, we are installing self order kiosks everywhere. Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, Walmart, CVS. Between that and online ordering through some app, a lot of jobs that anyone could do are going away. AI is going to knock out a bunch of not so “glamourous” jobs as well. If the population fails to adjust, we are going to see a lot of angry, unemployed people out there, which is not going to be a good thing.
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Dang what’d we do to you? 
I lived there for 20 years, I’m allowed.
In much of the country 60k per year is comfortable living. Local cost of living is a huge factor though, and this job is in a very high rent area. Its all relative.
That’s a weird way to describe the 5th largest economy in the world.
And the “living wage” in SoCal/Irvine is $30/hr for a single adult, no children, which is where the job is. So… you literally couldn’t afford to work there.