This morning, I got caught up in two different reddit threads about game devs doing free or spec work. In one case, the person was offering free services to build their portfolio. In the second, the person was asked by an interviewer to provide 2 weeks worth of work that they intended to use in their product in order to decide if they wanted to hire him full time. In both scenarios, neither of them were aware of what spec work is and why it’s bad.

Spec work is doing work for free with the promise that, maybe if the client likes your output enough, they may pay you. It takes on other forms. Contests (i.e. $500 prize for the best logo submission!), “portfolio building opportunities”, or trial projects to prove your skill. All of them are used and all of them are bad.

We’re at a fascinating time in games right now. They’re easier to make than they have ever been. This accessibility has made the tools better, but increased competition has made the creative side of games much harder. While the accessibility is a net positive for the industry, the influx of competition has driven prices down to the floor. Talent is more undervalued than it’s ever been but the time and effort required to ship a good game is still prohibitively high. Many game makers are finding it impossible to lower their value any more than they already have.

Spec work often gets taken on by those of us who feel desperate. We need to show our skill. We want to get our stuff out there so that someone will eventually say “yeah, we should pay this person to keep helping us”. Sometimes it takes the form of us wanting to “help” others who don’t have the money to pay for our talents. The intent is good here, no doubt. I’ve been there before and I get it.

Unfortunately, it hurts us to do this. Here’s the truth of it all.

People rarely hire you on spec because they eventually want to pay you well. More likely, they want free work. They want maximum output for minimum input. They need something done badly, and they can’t afford to hire someone worth the cost of the task, so they’re trying to find justifiable reasons to get free or nearly free work out of somebody else. As long as you do your best to acknowledge the nature of spec work, you’ll be better off.

So how do we deal with it?

Don’t. Ignore it. It’s not worth your time, even if you’re a beginner. There are better ways to get your career going. I would even dare say that working outside games in order to support your side work in games is simply better for so many other reasons.

You can work for free as much as you like. Join up with friend to make games in your spare time. Work on your own projects to build your portfolio. Do whatever you want to build your craft without pay. Just don’t let someone lure you with the promise of money if they’re withholding it right out the gate. They have little intention to pay you what you’re worth and have started the relationship by saying as much, implicit or otherwise.

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Collin is the CEO and Founder of PlayWell.

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This article originally appeared on the PlayWell blog.