If every single employer has the same work conditions, then what? If the state of the industry as a whole is low pay and unpaid overtime, then it's not like a developer can just go to a better job.
If that's not an acceptable tradeoff, you can always make your dream indie game on weekends.
But I feel much, much more proud of the games I released than anything I've done outside of the games industry, even applications/services I've worked on that have been used by millions of people.
In corporate dev it just feels too much like I could have been replaced by just about anyone and those applications would have been basically the same, or only mattered for a few years before the company decided to throw everything out and rewrite everything, letting my old code disappear whereas with games my own ideas and creativity and how I determined the mechanics should feel and I have something at least partially unique to show for it after that people can go back and play decades later.
Games have their own problem, in that there's so many games out there that unless you've made a superhit, your game will fade to the point where probably no one is playing your game anymore anyway, in place of one of the hundreds of other games coming out all the time, but at least there are people out there that try to preserve as many games as they can, and there's a chance someone will run into your game, dust off the cobwebs, and share it in a video with the world, and a few more people will discover it and enjoy it.
Like for example I'm currently collecting and searching for obscure, fun puzzle games on the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color. All sorts of cool games there that probably only a handful of people in the world are playing right now.
A really cool surprise I can only find a couple of videos for online is Klustar for Game Boy Color. It's Tetris blocks coming in from all sides and you move a central mass around and rotate it, and try to make those blocks connect somewhere on that mass, which alters its shape, and make large squares to clear them and shrink your cluster, meanwhile some blocks slip past and land on the opposite edge of the board and stay there for the rest of the game, blocking you and other pieces, until eventually your cluster is too big and ungainly and oddly shaped that you can't place the blocks in good places anymore and all the pieces attach in bad spots and you fill up the board and the game ends. Really addicting. I don't know of another game like it out there right now. And probably no one is playing it. But at least I found it and I'm enjoying it.
The success of a studio does not seem to correlate with how poorly or well they treat their staff.
In CA overtime is always paid for more junior staff (QA, junior artists/designers) as there were a number of high profile lawsuits against games companies back in the early 2000s. For senior staff and most programmers the salaries are (in my experience) competitive with general development work outside of the Bay Area and FAANG space.
It's people's own responsibility to make themselves valuable. It's nice if some people offer pathways to becoming valuable (education, traineeships, whatever), but I don't see how anybody would be entitled to it. That would imply somebody would be responsible for delivering it, and who should that be? Why would anybody be responsible for it?
That said my views on unions have become less negative: as someone pointed out - at least around here the construction companies with highest percentage of unionized workers are generally the most profitable ones year after year.
Why? I can only guess but I guess people work better when they know they are safe and also get a fair pay based on their work.
Seriously?
You honestly think your employer, who you support with your daily toil, does not contribute to any political causes you might find objectionable?
It's factored in when I accept my job.
I've worked for next to nothing to support causes I find worthy so I am allowed to hold opinions on this.
But with my money, I choose.
Unions are a tool for workers to come together and collectively negotiate working conditions and compensation with their company. That's it. Allowing Unions to collect fees such that they can donate to political blurs the original intent of the Union in the first place. I would support a bill banning Unions from donating to political causes so that we can all get back to remembering that Unions are a useful, narrow, and focused tool that does one thing super well.