Really? I never noticed any particularly high barrier of entry with either.
Pygame for example was very popular with hobbyist game programmers in the early 2000s as it provided a much easier way to get started with game programming than C, which was the most popular alternative back then (Unity 3d only released in 2005 and Unreal Engine only became free in 2015).
What I do remember from the early 2000s, though, was legions of aspiring game programmers struggling with C and C++.
Pygame for example was very popular with hobbyist game programmers in the early 2000s as it provided a much easier way to get started with game programming than C, which was the most popular alternative back then (Unity 3d only released in 2005 and Unreal Engine only became free in 2015).
What I do remember from the early 2000s, though, was legions of aspiring game programmers struggling with C and C++.