IS ASTRARIUM GAMES A NON-PROFIT ORGANISATION?
We are often confused with having the same goals as gaming non-profits that provide amazing support and advice to people looking to get into the games industry. However, we are a for-profit independent video game studio, a private limited company, based in the United Kingdom.
We develop and sell our own games in order to pay the bills. We have a small cohort of paid administrative staff, but the majority of our expansive team is made up of paid freelancers and volunteers.
HOW DO I GET A PAYING JOB AT ASTRARIUM GAMES?
First of all, volunteer with us! It’s great fun, it’s low stakes and you can work when you like. Unless we are hiring for a highly skilled role that requires a specific skillset, then we only offer paid freelance roles on our website or on our Discord server to our volunteers.
Astrarium exclusively offers freelance, not PAYE, contracts for specific game development roles, such as Design, Art or Programming, based on the history of working with us and portfolios - we don’t do aptitude tests or interviews. Each contract is built around a lump sum of money, split into various milestones depending on the tasks that are required to complete the jobs.
Senior and Management administrative roles are based on a rolling freelance basis, offering a minimum agreed-upon sum per month based on an agreed-upon contract.
I READ ABOUT ‘PROFIT SHARING’ ON THE HOMEPAGE. HOW DOES THAT WORK?
With the permission of the volunteers, we keep a record of their involvement in any projects they have volunteered their time and effort to, along with key information about
Once a game is launched, then once every three months (at the end of March, June, September, and December) the profits of the game from various platforms are compiled, and the gross profits are compiled into a report, to be shared with all volunteers involved.
50% are kept by Astrarium Games to cover our infrastructure costs and offer more paid freelance roles, and 50% are split evenly across all volunteers who participated in the development.
10% are allocated to the administrative volunteers, such as community managers and the social media marketing team, and 40% of the gross profits are split evenly across all volunteers who have contributed, either now or in the past. We will try to contact all volunteers, first through Discord and then through email, to notify them of any profits that have been made. They are then required to fill out an invoice for the amount they are about to be sent, and the money is sent exclusively via wire transfer within 30 days.
DON’T FREELANCERS GET A SHARE OF THE PROFITS?
We provide a lump sum bonus out of our 50% for any paid freelancers who worked on the game, once per quarter.
CONTACT FORM
If we haven’t been able to answer your question, or if you have something else you’d like to get in touch with us about, then please fill out the Contact Form below! We will be in touch as soon as we can.
We are always excited to hear from anyone who has an interest in what we do! As an experimental studio, we often get questions about how we conduct business - how we are able to put our volunteers first, while also providing paid employment and services to other studios.
Below you will find a list of popular questions we have been asked over the years, and if you still feel your question hasn’t been answered, or if you are interested in contacting us for something other than volunteering with us, then please scroll to the bottom and find our Contact Form.