I think most importantly they are paid decently. The ambitious career developer on coke or medication became more common recently, but is still an outlier and n

I think most importantly they are paid decently. The ambitious career developer on coke or medication became more common recently, but is still an outlier and not the type to start worker rebellions either. Smaller developers work in very cooperative endeavours. While some form of work councils don't need to be antagonistic to management, there often is simply no need of something like this in smaller studios. Game development is an extremely high risk endeavour in any case. A large developer like Ubisoft can dampen that risk a bit, but insecurity remains. This is a large driver while they will use established formulas much more often than smaller indie devs. A union does make sense in some industries, but tariffs would probably lead to worse conditions and leave the individual dev with less choice. Currently many employers do quite a lot to accommodate devs.