Keep in mind that the skills needed for game development were pretty much dark arts at the time. There was little to no formal education for them and few tools that weren’t made in-house. So not only was the pool of people they could put to work immediately pretty small, the competitive market meant that companies were incentivised to produce the most impressive-looking games, meaning they didn’t need merely competent people, but the freaks who could pull the most out of the limited hardware.

So they were worth their weight in gold, but companies didn’t actually want to pay them that much.