Top 5 Most Difficult Jobs to Hire - June 25

Hiring difficulty is affecting some of the biggest game companies in Korea and worldwide, we look at the most difficult-to-hire positions for gaming employers at the moment.

Jun 27, 2025

Gaming

Top 5 Most Difficult Jobs to Hire - June 25

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Hiring Market Overview - 2025 June Edition

Critical Roles Exist

Employers/Unions

University/High School Students

Employees Interested in Changing Company/Job

Finally, The Most Critical Jobs in Korean Gaming

1. Senior Concept Artists (5+ years experience)

2. Senior Game Animator (5+ years experience)

3. VFX/Effects Artist position (min. 2 years experience)

4. 3D Character Artist position (min. 2 years experience)

5. Level Designer position (3+ years experience)

Engineer Truth with Alternative Data

Subscribe to our newsletter https://tally.so/r/wAOZoD

Hiring Market Overview - 2025 June Edition

It’s basically an evolving supply and demand function of the Korean labour market. The strange thing is that the gaming companies are at a relative ease in search of programmers and developers. These job titles and roles were considered to be the hottest job titles only about a couple of years ago in the domestic market. The supply of those labours with skills caught up with the market and now there’s more than enough developers apparently for employers to choose from whether it be client programmers, server engineers and engine programmer in gaming.

Critical Roles Exist

Maybe it’s easier to hire for some roles in the gaming industry. However, it is not the whole picture as some of the senior roles are extremely challenging to fill within a reasonable timeframe, causing HR departments across the gaming industry some degree of panic. Due to the labour shortage for some senior roles and the difficulty in hiring and filling cubicles for some biggest names in the Korean gaming industry, there are signs of Korean games company execs revamping the traditional roles of human resources. Who would be most interested in knowing the critical jobs list? Interestingly enough, there are many applications for our following audiences.

Employers/Unions

Employers must know the current labour price with specialised skills. The downside of not knowing the present market value of their employees or skill sets could be increased turnovers, unending talent attraction crisis, rising time-to-fill days and lower perceived brand market values by future employees. As highlighted in Korea, Nexon is currently experiencing the first-ever gaming industry strike by its development studio & subsidiary ‘Neople’ due to missing one third of its bonus pay despite making one billion dollars of revenue for its latest development project in China. Missing raise and less-than-expected compensation levels could be operationally prohibitive in times of talent shortage and hiring difficulty as it gives more bargaining power to labour unions. Both employees and employers must be in the know for transparent pay scale and current market value to create the impression of fair deals for both parties involved.

University/High School Students

Why not adjust the course syllabus, milestones and modules to what the employers actually demand? University students want jobs, high school students want a curriculum that prepares them to find jobs, well eventually at some point. The current system works in silos that the students try to fit into a frame of reference as in a set of endless curriculums devised by professional ‘educators’. Educators don’t create jobs - employers do. So why not revamp and adjust the curriculum to what the companies want? Obliq Talent Intelligence highlights real-time hiring data and signals to indicate what is demanded in the market now. University students will have a better chance of landing jobs by adjusting their study plans, routine activities and after school society activities according to our talent demand indicator as the labour market shifts, adjusts and fixes itself by the function of labour supply and demand.

Employees Interested in Changing Company/Job

Knowing the most demanded and critical shortage roles in the current market gives you the edge on the negotiating table whether it be annual raise, title promotion, pay bump or bonuses. Employees may be entitled to better pay else where by reading the labour market price fluctuations correctly. Staying at a stagnant position with relative low pay presents a situation where the worker instantly losses the opportunity costs of earning more. Knowing the exact worth of your labour at the current market climate prevents such market losses on the value of your unit labour.

Finally, The Most Critical Jobs in Korean Gaming

Our proprietary model ingests thousands of data points such as job postings, public filings, statistics and publications to identify the most demanded but extremely difficult to fill positions across the industries and countries in APAC. We identified the following top 5 most difficult job to fill for employers and, at the same time, most lucrative positions to switch now for employees to bump their current pay.

1. Senior Concept Artists (5+ years experience)

who can create comprehensive visual designs across characters, creatures, items, and promotional materials using traditional and digital art skills using photoshop, matte painting, concept drawing with good Unreal Engine 5 skills.

Master Photoshop and digital painting techniques

Learn traditional drawing and painting (essential foundation)

Basic 3D modeling knowledge (helps with form understanding)

Unreal Engine 5 fundamentals

Matte painting techniques

2. Senior Game Animator (5+ years experience)

who can focus on creating high-quality character animations for games and cinematics. The role requires expertise in Unreal Engine and involves comprehensive animation work including keyframe animation, facial animation, motion capture direction and editing, plus technical skills in rigging and resource management.

Master Maya, 3ds Max, or Blener for animation

Learn Unreal Engine 5 animation systems

Understand rigging fundamentals

Motion capture workflow and cleanup

Facial animation and lip-sync techniques

3. VFX/Effects Artist position (min. 2 years experience)

who can focus on creating visual effects and graphics for game development. VFX artists with strong technical skills in Unreal Engine 5 who can handle both creative visual effects work and technical implementation.

Character production R&D background

Master Unreal Engine 5's Niagara particle system

Learn Houdini, Maya, or 3ds Max for effect creation

Understand shaders and material creation

Real-time rendering principles

4. 3D Character Artist position (min. 2 years experience)

responsible for creating realistic 3D character assets and resources who can create high-quality, realistic human and creature models using industry-standard tools, with particular emphasis on photorealistic results and technical expertise in modern game development pipelines.

3D Modeling proficiency (3ds Max)

Texturing expertise (Substance Painter/Photoshop)

3D Sculpting skills (ZBrush)

Clothing/Garment creation (Marvelous Designer/Xgen)

Photorealistic character R&D experience

Unreal Engine knowledge

Character production R&D background

5. Level Designer position (3+ years experience)

Who creates situations that give players interesting problems to solve in each ‘level’. They use the systems and mechanics devised by the gameplay designer. This includes actions, events, objects and environments. It may also include how the characters and non-playable characters (NPCs) behave.

Responsible for developing a next-generation open-world games with post-apocalyptic survival themes using an established IP for PC/mobile cross-platform.