I would not be surprised if it is true. Every fucking body graduating high school who can cut on a PC wants to be a game developer. And tons of tech schools offer a degree focusing on that in particular. The pool of available employees is probably larger than many other fields. I mean, who wants to spend all day maintaining code for insurance when they could be writing a cool new game?
[–] rwbj ago
Yeah definitely, but there's a pretty solid filter in technical skills. And of those who could go work for let's say EA, I don't think many are anymore. Not that long ago this was not the case, as games companies had much better reputations and so could get their pick of the cream of the crop, and offer scraps.
But those times are past, and big game companies' reputations all are pretty much horrific. It's tough to get numbers without H1-B, but game development salaries no longer seem particularly low. These are the numbers for EA. And even with H1-Bs dragging down the average you're looking at $92k a year average for a starting software engineer.