[bpodgursky]

I know it sounds trite, but it really is supply and demand.

So so so many developers want to build games. The market for developers making things that _aren't_ games is red-hot. But because they REALLY want to develop games, game companies can use them to their limit for low pay.

[foobarian]

The game industry has the unique advantage that entry level developers spend their preceding 10-15 years playing games and building up a desire to make them. Imagine if kids had Enterprise Software consoles and played with Jira tickets on them. The rest of the industry would be swimming in applicants :-)