well, for one, the top 10% households drive most discretionary consumption in the US because the other 90% are broke.

games are closer to art than products or services. the economic system around art has long been broken, imo mostly because of one reason - art generally is difficult to place a monetary value on in isolation: either based on cost to produce (+ value of skills needed), or based on value to end user. in the case of games, the disparity is extremely large. a game can cost upwards of $1m to build, and is worth approx $5 to a gamer. thus the economic model becomes "hit-based". this means large risk upfront, and a lot of "winner take all" in survival. yet like all art, there will be a steady supply of those willing to take abuse to practice the art. this leads to a lot of abusive industry practices.

the main differences afaik from movies & music industry are

- larger percentage of highly technically skilled workers who could make more money in another industry with their skillset

- it's a younger industry and thus has slightly less entrenched "this is just how things are done" cultural energy, allowing such articles to exist, fewer nepo-babies in control positions, etc

but as it has grown and every other entertainment industry has been getting their fingers in the pie, it has increasingly been adopting those toxic practices that have long existed in art under capitalism

The US dollar has lost 20% of value over the past 5 years. You can print money out of thin air, but you can't print industrial output (or good games).