In several countries in eastern and western Europe it is pretty much the same (as the American psychiatry). My brother has been depressed for quite some time (about 10-ish years) now and has seen psychiatrists in, for example, The Netherlands. The treatment there was indeed trying out a few different drugs to see what the effect of these is.
Fortunately, he is steadily (but slowly) improving but not thanks to drugs and psychiatry(he mostly stopped with any prescription drug 6 months after starting because it didn't do anything besides numbing numbing him).
Congratulations! This game looks amazing and kudos for the 2 years of hard work and perseverance! It must be really hard to keep motivated as a team for such a long time.
The art and game play looks really good and your composer did a very good job!
You have several options in this situation as far as I can see:
1) Get a raise in equity - this is the option that you boss offered you. Say, that you negotiate a better offer (2%-3%). In this case, if I judge the numbers correctly, that will match your current salary to what other companies on the market are offering (the 30-50K). However, that will ONLY match those offers - your risk in this case so you would have to negotiate a lot more to take into account the risk difference (30-50K fixed vs 30-50K potential).
Even if you do that, you will still have the insane work hours, the feeling that you are not appreciated enough and the risk hanging above your head whether you will hit the target salary.
2) Get a raise with both equity and money - you could negotiate a 1% equity + a decent cash raise. It will be difficult if your boss is so stingy but it is worth the shot. Keep in mind again your risk vs reward. I would at least want a raise of 20K + the 1% equity. That would give you more than what the market is offering you.
However, the point above applies here as well although you will be in a better position this time since you will have some stable cash increase.
3) GTFO from there
I have dealt with bosses like that and, in my opinion, you run a good risk of not being happy there, burnout, loss of motivation, etc. Your boss seems not to value his employees very much and this will most probably never change. I can imagine that you will always need to chaise the market average (just like now) and negotiate to actually be paid an amount which you could easily receive elsewhere (judging by your offers). Granted, my views on this are a bit extreme (I think that an appreciate boss should offer you a raise instead of you having to ask for one) but that is my opinion.
My advice: go and check out some of your other offers - it is very likely that you will find a better paying job with less working hours. If you have worked heavy hours until now, this change will do wonders for you. Once you find a nice place, leave.
The media leads people to believe that great companies all got successful overnight so most people think that building a technology startup = quick money and success. However, most successful companies (or teams building successful products) went through years of building and iterations.
I am a .NET C# developer located in the Netherlands with 5 years of experience and a few diverse back end and front end projects. I am experienced with MS SQL server, ASP.NET, MVC, WPF, MVVM. While my strong side is back end work and enterprise solutions, I am also experienced with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery and KnockoutJS.
I would be happy to have a chat with you over your needs and requirements.
Fortunately, he is steadily (but slowly) improving but not thanks to drugs and psychiatry(he mostly stopped with any prescription drug 6 months after starting because it didn't do anything besides numbing numbing him).