"the Harvey Weinsteins of the game industry don't try to sleep with brilliant Romanian programmers, instead they work them to death."
As a romanian programmer (although not in the game industry), i must admit this is a very eloquently put. Hats off to you sir.
As an ex-game dev this is pretty on the mark.
They've honed using your "passion" to extract as much work as they can from you for ~2-3 years. After which there's a 50/50 shot that the studio folds/etc.
In the AAA space there's also a vicious 90/10 rule where 10% of the games make 90% of the money. With rising costs it becomes increasingly difficult to keep hitting that 10% you need to keep your studio running.
The focus of exploitation is just different -- the Harvey Weinsteins of the game industry don't try to sleep with brilliant Romanian programmers, instead they work them to death.