While they may make above average in the overall assessment of income for a country, they make well below average for the type of work they are doing. Many game companies know they can pay below market wages because of demand for the jobs.

Source: When I quit game dev, I got a 60% raise and I was on the higher end of the pay scale at that game dev job. I know lead developers with nearly 10 years of experience making under 70k in games. I frequently offer them roles that would double their salary and they turn it down because they like working in games.

I bet they make less than warehouse workers per hour

Some of the QA staff we had made barely more than min wage. It was really depressing talking to dudes that had been there for years being happy they were getting a raise to $17/hr.

I know a few non-union construction workers, and a few game developers. And the construction workers seem so much less abused than the game devs. (though the game devs do make more money)

I think the employers of carpenters have to be pretty aware that a union is likely if they step too far out of line, though. Game development companies don't really have that threat yet. It's possible, but it hasn't really happened before.

The construction workers also generally benefit from living in areas that they can afford to buy a home in. The game dev has the higher salary but if you are living in a apartment its of little consolation.

This doesn't make any sense.

The game developer could just move out to the suburbs and commute alongside the construction worker (construction happens downtown[1], and those workers sure as shit aren't living anywhere nearby).

1 - Pick your major city.

You get to escape the city if you work residential construction and commute to the suburbs from a more rural area.

Only if you live in the city, and sometimes "the city" is 45,000 people total. Sometimes it is smaller. Construction places exist lots of places.

You don't just get to go to new places just because you are a construction worker. I think you might be viewing it through a somewhat romantic lens.

My family does it for a living, going back a few generations. You can choose to live and work in the city, but what most of my ancestors did was buy a house on the outskirts of a relatively wealthy suburban area, like you find around almost any city. Once the houses get far enough away that you can't reasonably commute to downtown they become more affordable. You can find a sweet spot where it is reasonable to drive to the houses of the people who commute into the city, but not to do so yourself. Then your charging city rates and paying country prices. Next best thing to working remotely.

But that same argument (live further out than work to save on housing) applies to most jobs.

Here in DC, teachers earn more the closer to the city they work and typically live further out than they work to save on housing.

Software is a bit of an anomaly here - some of the best paying jobs are out on the edge of the suburbs because that’s where AOL and Network Solutions and several other “OG” dot-coms were started. And AWS, Google, and others have since opened offices nearby.

The game developers that are trying to unionize here are the QA department, and their pay is not at all similar to programmers and other game developers. Their pay is likely closer to minimum wage than anything.

The game industry is notorious for expecting way, way above 40hrs/wk of work, especially as deadlines to release approach. Stories of game devs sleeping under their desks at night are shockingly common.

"Game developers are paid well above the average income for the country and you work in an office where nobody would possibly get hurt" is a claim that falls apart if you do much research. The industry is full of horror stories of people ending up hospitalized as a result of aggressive schedules (salaried roles with no OT pay or constraints on time! people sleeping in the office, working 6-7 day weeks for months at a time, etc!) and the pay really is NOT that competitive at most studios. There are outliers that pay really well, mostly ones backed by silicon valley investment money, but the median is not that good.

Protection from abusive management is always going to be important no matter how much you earn.

Oh, I joined the union back when I was a gamedev precisely because some employees (of the company's subsidiary, to be clear on this matter) were not granted a paid vacation nor remote work in spite of a heavy flood that almost paralyzed the entire region. When you are not unionized someone will get hurt.

I've actually worked as a game developer (albeit on the online services side, so not touching C++ game code directly). I've done 80-100 hour weeks in the run up to internal milestones, betas, and full launches.

The pay, especially at studios, is very low by software engineering standards (only embedded is worse) and people can and constantly are hurt at the job. Divorces, alcoholism, and burnout are so common in the industry that they are just accepted and joked about. And I've seen real burnout. Like not being able to read properly after a couple all nighters, anxiety disorders from pagerduty, becoming fully despondent. Mental work is still work and overwork is still hurtful.

They provide much more value than they are paid meaning there is an imbalance of power between the market participants. This can be fixed via collective bargaining.