$330,000 to $1.8 million? Video game workers question public salary ranges.

The video game industry enjoys a meaningful footprint in California, supporting over 200,000 jobs in the state, from development work to hardware manufacturing and supplying, according to a 2020 study by the Entertainment Software Association, a video game trade organization. California employs over 17 million people in total, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Video games are viewed by some as recession-proof -- people will always seek home entertainment, the logic goes -- and the industry benefited from a boost in attention and revenue at the start of the pandemic.