Persona and Etrian Odyssey developer Atlus has announced an annual average employee salary increase of 15%.
In a press release (which is in Japanese; we’re using additional reporting by Noisy Pixel), Atlus announces the raise, as well as a boost in new graduate pay from 257,000 yen per month to 300,000.
That’s an increase from around $1700 a month to almost $2000 (at time of writing), which isn’t too bad at all.
This news follows on from a prior salary increase of 5% effected by Atlus back in April this year, putting the total salary increase for the studio at 20% over last year’s.
Atlus isn’t the only studio to announce salary increases for its employees this year; back in February, legendary Japanese studio Sega, which also happens to be Atlus’ parent company, also announced an average monthly salary boost of 30%.
Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco also announced a big pay increase for its employees around the time of that game’s release, and around a month later, Capcom followed suit with a 30% average pay increase for Japanese employees.
If you’re not familiar with Atlus, the studio is perhaps best-known for its Persona series, which is itself a spinoff of the long-running Shin Megami Tensei franchise.
Other games developed by the Japanese studio include the Etrian Odyssey series of dungeon-crawling RPGs, as well as other Shin Megami Tensei spinoffs like Soul Hackers and one-off projects like Radiant Historia (although the latter did receive a 3DS remaster).
Upcoming projects include the strategy RPG Persona 5 Tactica and the long-awaited remake Persona 3 Reload, as well as the fantasy RPG Metaphor Re Fantazio.
The studio is also currently gearing up to release Vanillaware’s upcoming Unicorn Overlord. Atlus and Vanillaware have collaborated a number of times, most recently on the idiosyncratic visual novel-come-mecha strategy RPG 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.
