>The entities on top are large multi-billion dollar corporations who are running a business, just like any other industry. And this has been more and more apparent in recent years seeing just how anti-consumer the video games industry is getting.

depends on the studio. Everyone focuses on the EA's, but most game studios aren't these huge billionaire ventures cranking out 12 games a year. It's certainly not the modern EA or Naughty Dog or Blizzard that give devs the low salary reputation.

I worked at one for 3 years, and it was <300 employees. I was still surprised at how much money they can bring in after talking to producers (spoiler: maybe it varies in other studios, but the most profitable games worked on weren't console games), but it was very clear that this wasn't a studio that could pay everyone even 100K/year and expect to be in business next year.