Slaves is probably not the right word, though working conditions in the game industry are on average pretty brutal. However, a big reason why they are is becaus

Slaves is probably not the right word, though working conditions in the game industry are on average pretty brutal. However, a big reason why they are is because there is such a huge pool of 20-something devs out there who are eagerly lined up to jump into gamedev. And it usually takes several years of living in that meat grinder for the scales to fall away from peoples' eyes, but even then as they leave there are plenty more lined up to take their place. From the perspective of management there's no problem at all, even though such working conditions actually cause a lot of fundamental issues in being able to successfully execute and continually losing the most senior and experienced devs as they get older and less tolerant of bullshit is kind of a big deal. See also: silicon valley startup culture.