Ultimately most of these game studios are working for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Valve. More pressure should be put on those mega-corporation

Ultimately most of these game studios are working for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Valve. More pressure should be put on those mega-corporations to reduce the commissions they charge developers who release games on their platforms - currently 30%. The consoles are not supercomputers anymore like the PS3, they mostly use off the shelf (AMD) hardware and x86 architecture. Soon they will just stream the game directly to a thin client which will only handle time-sensitive calculations like input and collision. On PC this 30% commission is even less justifiable since the platform is open and there is no hardware for Valve to get involved with. Cutting this commission would immediately put money into the hands of games studios and improve conditions for workers, whilst still leaving the platform holders ridiculously profitable. Its a shame no one has been first to move on this - Microsoft with Xbox would seem a good candidate given their desperation to attract devs to the platform and away from PS4/Sony. I think Telltale is just classic bad management. Not much different from other industries. I think the industry can make for a good career - find a small-ish studio with a string of successful releases and low overhead (no crappy legacy engine to maintain, cheap location).