This has been disproven and was called out at the time of the increase. Games cost less to develop now than ever. Microtransactions and recurrent subscription transaction1s like battlepasses mean a shit game gets to live longer than it would deserve. People have careers in the field and languages common to the industry - this isn’t a “new and groundbreaking” industry - its one of the largest on the planet.

Studios are absolutely not passing any of that $10 to lower level staff. It was to see if the market would bear it, and no other reason - and corporate defenders came out of the woodwork to pretend BILLION dollar corporations need more money. If videogames were too expensive to make, they’d not be spending so much, now would they?