Persona Developer Atlus Is Raising Its Average Employee Salary By 15%

Thats pretty neat, at least not the entire industry treats their employees like slaves.

They really are hard workers. Persona 5 Royal is huge and is extremely polished, at least on Series X where I played it on. As long as they can keep the employees, it's all good.

I really loved Soul Hackers 2, overlooked gem. It's tight and more linear but I enjoyed the story and the music a lot, more than Persona 5.

The first Atlus game I played was Tokyo Mirage Sessions on Wii U, that I also loved, so I've played three so far and I will play more. Persona 5 Tactica and Persona 3 Reload are coming to Game Pass.

Good to see.

Cost of living is biting globally and there is only so much people can absorb and many are well past that point. The old model of make everyone poorer to stem inflation is no longer palatable.

Apologies for a political take on a gaming forum. I am genuinely pleased for the employees.

Nice, hope that helps employees keep up with inflation and cost of living.

Thank you for giving your employees the support they need Atlus. Hopefully this will give everyone an incentive to make great progress for future projects.

Compared to a whole bunch of other companies giving people the sack at the same time, it certainly looks extra appreciable.

Nice to see what looks like 15% across the board. If a US company did a 15% average increase it would be 25% for the executives and 5% for the workers. 🤑

Nintendolife has talked about this happening about a dozen times, and yet every time they do not mention WHY it's happening.

Japan is facing "record" inflation of around 4.1% (which, for context, is still below average annual inflation basically anywhere else in the world, despite being considered a critical, earth shattering level in Japan).

Inflation is actually two factors; Global price inflation happens because the price of goods increases (which is around 7.1% in Japan and 7.7% world wide right now) and screw the proletariat inflation which happens because the richest people in a country look at inflation as an excuse to bleed people dry and up the costs of non-tangible services not related to labor.

World wide that's at around 7.1%. In Japan, it's negative .04%, and the reason that Japan's inflation is so much lower in general is that this number is rarely over 1%.

So Japan's wealthy are basically already doing everything they can to fight the impact of inflation by lowering the price of services to account for people having less money.

As such, the government took a radical step. Sort of a "so crazy it might work" move.

They asked companies to pay people more. Not a bill or a law or an order. They just asked pretty please with sugar on top like they were My Melody battling Kuromi.

And ... it worked! As of time of writing, over 85% of people in Japan have seen pay increases of over 10% sense the government made that request, with the mean pay increase being around 25%. The highest increases have been in manufacturing, where some line workers have seen huge increases (the largest bottling and beverage distributor gave a blanket 40% increase).

Some tech companies have even implemented "mean salary normalizing", in which they raised pay for everyone, and they pumped everyone making less then the mean salary to the mean. I know someone (who did building maintenance for a tech company) who went from making 5m yen a year to 31m yen a year. He got notified by e-mail.

Can you imagine that? Your phone goes off and it's work saying "Automated message, do not reply. Please note you're current salary of $30,000 a year has been increased to $200,000 a year."

This trick wouldn't work basically anywhere else, because as noted, knowing everyone was getting a pay increase of 10% would just result in the wealthiest people increasing the costs of services by 10% or higher.

It's been great to see them expand, hopefully Metaphor: ReFantazio starts a new generation for Atlus.
As much as I enjoy Persona, I don't enjoy the years of spinoffs, and attempts to do something new (Soul Hackers 2) haven't been hugely successful.

I think the key difference here is that Atlus is a Japanese company instead a Western (especially American) company. For better or worse, Japanese companies place a huge emphasis on loyalty between the company and the employee, so the more reputable ones do try to sweeten the deal to attract and retain talent.

Many Western companies, on the other hand, view employees as expendable, to be thrown away at a moment's notice, especially if the shareholders suddenly decide they're not getting enough dividends in their stock portfolios.

This story aside, we saw the difference between the two companies back in the 2010s. The late Satoru Iwata cut his own salary in half in 2014, with his fellow executives taking about a 30% pay cut, so they wouldn't have to lay anyone off due to the Wii U failing to sell.

Several years later, Activision Blizzard reported record revenue for the previous fiscal year, yet still laid off almost 800 employees (all in non-managerial positions) because they claimed that they failed to reach their target. All the while, their then-new Chief Financial Officer got a $15 million sign-on bonus.

If it came down to it, I would rather work for a Japanese company if it meant job security, especially one that is reputable (so not a burakku kigyō, or "black company," which tends to be a very toxic working environment). The thought of my job being on the line at any given time, even for a union job, makes me shudder.

@MrHappyFace I think part of that stems from the fact that Japanese culture views the collective good of society as more important than the desires of the individual.

They may be very conservative (in some cases, even more conservative than America), but they do try to make sure that the greater good is being served. Compare that to the West, especially the United States, where rugged individualism reigns supreme.

People here are expected to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" to get ahead, even though companies and their cronies in the government are fighting tooth and nail to take even that ability away from us.

Sheesh the contrast

Japan developers: raises, more jobs, and new buildings

Western developers: pay cuts, letting people go, and selling themselves to other companies.

@AstroTheGamosian

I don't like to make it out like Japan is some idealist sociality; they are still capitalists, not Marxists of anything where they truly would put the common good ahead of the individual, put to capture your key point:

Employment in Japan is a two way contract. You are expected to give EVERYTHING to your employer. One of my favorite examples, there is a episode of "Onegai My Melody" where a dad misses his kids (important thing) because he gets called into work. They go though the whole afterschool special thing we see a million times in the West until they learn the important lesson and ... the kid apologizes to his dad for being such a selfish little S^&T by thinking he's more important then dad's job. Your shoes aren't free, kid!

But as a business owner you are also expected to give EVERYTHING to your employees as well. It is your job to protect them and make sure they get the most out of life.

While the mega rich in the West brag about how much fake money they have in the bank, the mega rich in Japan brag about how much they pay their workers and how much time off and benefits they can give them. That's what you're working towards. That's what "success" looks like.

And ... well, 30% of the country being unionized certainly doesn't HURT.

While the intense social pressure this creates isn't ideal (and contributes to the higher then average suicided rate), the end result is you can count on your employer making decisions that are going to be in your best interest and protect your employment.

It's so different then what you would expect in the West that it's common to see localizations of "work conflicts" changed for Japan, because the idea that someone, say, pisses off the boss of makes a mistakes and their key stress factor is they are afraid of getting fired is completely unrelatable. You would be upset you let everyone down, you would be stressed about the social pressure to take accountability ... but obviously you're not going to get fired.

@MrHappyFace Oh, believe me, I know it's not ideal. After all, those burakku kigyō, or "black companies," are notorious for making their employees work long hours for low pay.

It is slow, painfully slow, but Japan is making progress towards a more fair and just society, where people can spend more time with friends and family instead of at work.

Still, though, when it comes to job security, I'd rather work for a Japanese company than an American one. Since many states here in America are at-will employment (meaning you can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all), your job is constantly on the line.