[manfredo]

The point is, these jobs still pay an average of over $90k year. They may come with serious hours but that's not unheard of in many white collar industries (e.g. finance, medicine, law). To turn around and call these people victims is really not valuable, and seriously degrades what it means to be a "victim" of labor practices. There are jobs that are a lot harder to do and pay a lot less that nobody bats an eye about.

The video game industry has been nothing but transparent about the working conditions, at least from what I've seen. Every game Dev I've talked to has been clear that working on X field in the game industry is going to be more stressful and less lucrative than applying the same skills elsewhere. The slogan in my CS department was that the game Dev industry is twice the pay for half the work.

While many do have fulfilling careers it was common sense to me and my peers that going into the game development industry was not worth it unless your passion seriously outweighs practical interests. Some people think they belong in that group and later find out that they misjudged their priorities. They made a life decision they regret but they are not victims. No more than my sister is a victim of biology because she studied biology and discovered after graduation she didn't like biology and changed to working in tech.