How to hire a game developer or a game development team
A game developer turns ideas on paper into something a player can pick up and enjoy. That covers a lot of ground: the feel of a jump, the rules of a card battle, the menus, the save system, the way the game behaves on a cheap phone or a five-year-old console, and the updates that keep players coming back after launch. Most hiring mistakes in games come from treating all of that as one skill. This guide walks through how to work out who you need, how to test them and how to set up the work so a remote developer or team can ship with you.
Work out which kind of game developer you need
“Game developer” is a broad title. In practice, studios hire for a few distinct jobs, and one person rarely covers all of them well.
- Gameplay programmer: builds the moment-to-moment play, such as controls, combat, puzzles, enemy behaviour and progression.
- Technical designer: sits between design and code, sets up levels, tunes numbers and builds the scripts designers use every day.
- Engine and tools programmer: works on rendering, loading, memory and the in-house tools that save the rest of the team time.
- Network programmer: handles multiplayer, matchmaking, server logic and the problems that only show up with real players and real lag.
- UI programmer: builds menus, shops, inventories and settings screens that work with touch, mouse and controller.
- Build and release engineer: keeps automated builds running and prepares submissions for app stores and console platforms.
For a small mobile title, one strong generalist who has shipped before can carry the code for a long time. For a multiplayer PC game, you will want at least one person who has run live servers. Write down the two or three jobs that matter most for the next six months and hire for those first.
Let the engine guide the shortlist
The engine you use narrows the field more than any other choice. If your project is in Unity, look for C# and Unity experience and see our page to hire Unity developers. If you build in Unreal, you need C++ and Blueprints, and our page to hire Unreal Engine developers covers that in detail. Godot is free and open source under the MIT licence, which many small studios like, and its GDScript language reads much like Python. Some studios run their own engine in C++, and some browser and casual games use JavaScript frameworks such as Phaser. If you have not picked an engine yet, a senior developer who has shipped in more than one can help you choose before you commit.
One game developer for hire, or a small team
Many founders start by looking for a single game developer for hire and later find they need more hands. A useful rule is to match the team to the stage you are in:
- Prototype: one or two developers who can build a rough playable version quickly, test the core idea and throw away what does not work.
- Production: gameplay and UI programmers, someone who owns builds and tools, and a tester, working next to your artists and designers.
- Live game: a smaller group focused on content updates, events, fixes, analytics and server costs.
When you hire a game development team through DigiWorks, each person works directly for you as a dedicated member of your team. You keep creative control and the decisions about scope. Art, sound and music are often handled by separate specialists or a partner studio, so plan who owns those early.
Test with a small paid task, not trivia
Interview questions about algorithms tell you little about whether someone can make a game feel right. A better test is a short paid task that looks like real work. Give the candidate a one-page design note for a single mechanic and ask them to build it in your engine. Or hand them a small project with a known bug and a slow scene, and ask them to fix the bug and explain why the scene is slow. Watch how they read the brief, what they ask before they start and how they describe the trade-offs they made. A developer who explains a frame time problem clearly will also explain problems to your producer clearly.
Questions that show real shipping experience
- Which of your games reached players, and what exactly did you build in it?
- Tell me about a feature you cut late. Why, and who made the call?
- How did you find the cause of your hardest crash after launch?
- What did you change to make a game run on lower-end devices?
- How do you hand a tuning task back to a designer so they can change it without you?
Platforms, porting and submissions
Each platform brings its own rules. Phones need small downloads, touch controls, battery care and app store review. PC players expect keyboard, mouse and controller support, many screen sizes and solid graphics settings. Console makers give approved developers their own technical requirements, and a build must pass the platform’s checks before release. Porting a game from one platform to another is a job in its own right: controls change, memory is tighter or looser, and menus need new layouts. Ask candidates which platforms they have personally shipped on, and whether they handled the submission or someone else did.
Live operations after launch
For many games the real work starts after release. Live operations means planning events and seasons, shipping content updates without breaking saves, reading analytics to see where players leave, watching crash reports and keeping server bills under control. Developers who have run a live game know how to put new features behind switches, roll back a bad update and talk to the community team about what is coming. If your game earns money through in-app purchases or ads, look for someone who has worked with store purchase systems and ad networks before.
Performance and quality are part of the job
A game that stutters or crashes loses players fast, whatever its ideas. Good game developers set a frame time budget early and check it often, profile on the slowest device you plan to support, and keep an eye on memory and load times. They also write tests for the parts that break silently, such as save files and purchases, and they keep a clear bug list with steps to reproduce. Testers who play the game every day are worth planning for from production onward, not only in the final weeks.
Working with a remote game developer
Remote game teams work well when the basics are in place: source control that handles large files, an automated build anyone can download, a task board with clear owners and regular playtests where everyone plays the latest version. Agree on shared hours for reviews and playtests. Make sure contracts state that the code and assets created for you belong to your company, and that the developer works under a non-disclosure agreement. DigiWorks handles the contract, payroll and local paperwork, so you can focus on the game.
What a game developer costs
As a broad US benchmark, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median yearly pay of software developers, the group that includes people who build games, at 135,980 US dollars in May 2025. Remote game developers in Latin America, Eastern Europe, South Africa or South Asia usually cost less, and you see their pay and our fee as separate lines. Engine fees, store fees and server costs come on top, so include them in your budget from the start.
Common mistakes when hiring game developers
- Hiring for the engine name alone, without checking what the person actually shipped.
- Asking one developer to cover gameplay, servers, UI and porting at the same time.
- Skipping a playable task and relying only on a portfolio video.
- Leaving testing and performance work until just before launch.
- Forgetting to plan who will run updates, events and fixes after release.